Tag: Literature

It’s my story and I’m sticking to them

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Looking back, I am surprised to realize how much of my fiction remains, at heart, reporting. Yes, despite elements of surrealism, fantasy, even absurdity.

Do I regret all the time and effort that have seemingly gone nowhere?

Sometimes, yes, but there’s also a sense of pride and a better sense of identity because I have these in hand. The sense of loss would have been greater otherwise.

Along the way, family and friends were slighted, along with public service or political activism. Even outings to the mountains or beach became less frequent. From what I’ve seen, writers make lousy spouses or partners. Consider yourself warned.

I am surprised by the amount of labor that took place in my odd free hours after my sabbatical. Also, by what a bold and risky move taking that year off had been. It did nothing to enhance my resume, for one thing. And I’ll return to the lack of health insurance but spare you the rant about how the current system, even with Obamacare, inhibits entrepreneurial advances. It’s something I couldn’t have done if I weren’t single, not unless I had a very supportive partner. (And then I would have felt guilty. Go figure.)

Let me confess my obsessive (Pollyannish?) looking for natural beauty, wherever; my need to have a connection to soil and water while overlooking the obvious ugliness. Applicable to the hippie thing, too.

And then there was the emotional pain buried in my psyche, a deep well to tap.

I’ve said nothing of the years of therapy since leaving Baltimore or the ways they’ve enriched the writing. Here I had thought such “healing” would impair my writing, but it’s not so. Both long rounds instead opened emotions to me, not just the intellect.  

I’m still baffled by the lack of novels by others closely reflecting the places and experiences I encountered.

Jeffrey Eugenides has come closest, though he was still off in the future. Not just his Greek-American perspective, but his Midwest roots not that much different from mine.

Richard Farina’s Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me and Norman Gurney’s Divine Right’s Trip catch other corners. Tom Wolfe’s Electric Acid Kool Aid Test misses altogether, and, besides, it wasn’t even fiction. Or was it?

Well, I can go back to Richard Brautigan, at the outset of the ‘60s, including his Pacific Northwest flavor.

Beyond that, though, I turn to the poets.

Also, what if I had recast my novels more as a genre? Or even taken the big books apart for shorter series?

Well, it’s still one writer’s life. Make of it what you will.

How do you feel about family?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Cassia would have to say she’s in a big happy extended family, but she would disagree with

Tolstoy on his other point. Hers is not the same as any other. As for the unhappy part, she carries a world of grief after the disappearance of her father in a mountain avalanche.

My novel What’s Left follows the bereft daughter in her quest for identity and meaning over the decades that follow. Bit by bit, she discovers that he’s left her far more than she ever would have imagined, in effect guiding her to some pivotal choices.

The ebook is one of five novels I’m making available for FREE during Smashword’s annual end-of-the-year sale. Pick up yours in the digital platform of preference.

Think of this as my Christmas present to you. How can you not be interested in insights about family, especially at this time of year? Even if this one does have some Goth twists, probably unlike yours.

For details, go to the book at Smashwords.com.

Acid test environmentalist and poet: Wendell Berry (1934- )

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

My introduction to Berry came in reading his Long-Legged House while sitting on a gorgeous Navajo rug on the floor of the Ostroms’ contemporary home atop a wooded ravine in southern Indiana. It was a magical matrix, considering the story.

Berry was the embodiment of back-to-the-earth, having returned to his native Kentucky in 1964 and taking up farming by horse teams (or maybe mules). He did so to the consternation of colleagues in Manhattan who argued that he was just beginning to make a name for himself and that he’d lose his momentum and start writing sentimental verse about bluegrass.

Instead, he struck gold. His poems grew from real friendships and longstanding relationships. A bigger calling came in his environmental advocacy, especially as it expanded into real economics that countered the bean counters whose views neglected the value of parents, conservation, health, and the like. It even led him to a radical Christianity, including pacifism, and work with the Amish, where he met David Kline, whose weekly birdwatching columns were collected into a wonderful book, Great Possessions, which Berry helped shepherd to publication. (It’s about much more than birds, believe me. If you’re curious about Amish life, I’d suggest starting here.)

There’s something that’s much more life-affirming in Berry’s writing than in Robinson Jeffords’ strong but misanthropic nature poems from a generation earlier.

Berry had noted that his efforts at rebuilding the soil on his farm took 16 or 17 years to show signs of rebounding. It was something I later observed in our gardening in Dover, dealing with what my wife called Dead Dirt. Over the seasons, ours began to soften and then welcome earthworms and finally flowers and vegetables.

So it is with Berry’s pages.

Pick up your free copy now

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Celebrity writer Tom Wolfe lamented that nobody had written the big hippie novel, something akin to the Great American Novel, but he was wrong. I’ve said so in some previous postings here.

For my part, let me invite you to Daffodil, Indiana, as its tranquil – some might even say dopy – campus goes radical. No outside agitators are needed in the face of the ongoing repression. The Revolution of Peace & Love is its own calling.

Daffodil Uprising is one of five novels I’m making available to you for FREE during Smashword’s annual end-of-the-year sale. The ebook is available to you in the platform of your choice.

Think of this as my Christmas present to you. Or, as we used to say, If it feels good, do it!

For details, go to the book at Smashwords.com.

The making of a hippie

Is there another novel in the works?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

It’s a fair question, though for now, I’d rather be plunging into a reading orgy. My to-be-read stack is huge, both paper and digital books and periodicals. I’m feeling rather famished.

As for fiction, nothing since my mid-30s seems to suggest a hot story. Most novels, by the way, seems focused on life under age 30. Or at least rediscovering it. As for growing older, as in aging? No sex? Well, depends on the hook. For now, everything I’m seeing points toward nonfiction.

If I did another novel, I’d want to limit the number of named characters. Just two? Perhaps four or six or eight max? It’s obviously character-driven, not action. The volume itself would be thinner, too.

~*~

There are some other drafts I could clean up, but would any of them be worth the effort? The endeavors  to build readership can be quite exhausting.

I’ve never done this before

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

This may seem crazy, but for Smashword’s annual End-of-the-Year sale, I’ve decided to offer five of my novels to you FREE.

It’s your chance to pick up these ebooks at no risk. If you like the stories, perhaps you’ll leave a brief review and five stars at the website, just to encourage other readers who come along in the future.

The titles are Daffodil Uprising, when youth across the country went freaky; Pit-a-Pat High Jinks, with lovers and friends setting forth in premature adulthood; Subway Visions, with wild rides through the Underground; What’s Left, as a bereft daughter tries to make sense of her bohemian parents and close-knit Greek family; and Yoga Bootcamp, where Asian spirituality sizzles in a back-to-the-earth funky farm not far from the Big Apple.

Think of it as my Christmas present to you. I hope you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

The sale starts today and ends January first. Please don’t delay! Go to Smashwords.com for more.

Acid test novelist: Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Maybe I was intrigued by the title of the 1962 play, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” but when I finally got around to reading her, in the novel The Waves, it was epiphany. While I had heard of stream-of-thought writing, but what overwhelmed me was the utter beauty of the prose and its observations. What poured forth was a stream, period.

I do get caught up in style more than content. Perhaps that reflects much of my career as a copy editor having to clean up a news story on a tight deadline.

Still, returning to her is always refreshing.

The matter of naming those characters

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I’d love to hear other novelists and short story writers discuss their reasons for selecting the names they apply to the figures in their stories.

For that matter, I’d love to hear readers’ reactions. Like what’s your favorite connection there?

I’ve avoided using names of people I’ve known well. Surprisingly, it became a problem especially in my ashram novel where the best Sanskrit names had already been given to my fellow residents. Elsewhere, it eliminates a wide swath of common names, starting with John, James, Robert, Thomas, and William for males. Or Jack, Jimmy, Bobby, Tommy, and Billy, more colorfully.

Had I known they wouldn’t be reading my work anyway, maybe I should have used the names and left people guessing. I’ve tried to be gentle, though, and perhaps that’s a weakness.

Though I’m not one to apply nicknames in everyday life, I have found them useful in my fiction. As examples, I’ll offer “Big Pumpkin” and “Elvis” for the swami in Yoga Bootcamp.

~*~

There’s also the matter of which figures get named and which ones can pass through unnamed. We don’t want to tangle a reader, do we?

A major consideration in revising my output was an attempt to reduce the number of named characters. For a big book, like the five-generation span of What’s Left or the four-year college life of Daffodil Uprising or the burgeoning social life of Kenzie in Pit-a-Pat High Jinks, this was a challenge.

I did find myself shading Greek tradition in What’s Left: repetition of a name within a family is common but would have been utterly confusing here.

As an alternative, I tried to limit some to a single chapter, treating it like a short story; when it was done, so were they.

Acid test essayist: Tom Wolfe (1930-2018)

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Not to be confused with the Depression-era novelist Thomas Wolfe, the journalist Tom came to prominence in the final years of the New York Herald Tribune, my favorite newspaper ever.

With its clean, classic design, smart writing and editing, and sometimes playfully tabloid headlines, it was a standout in a very competitive newspaper market but looking for one more edge to assure its survival.

Voila, Wolfe emerged with his hyper, supercharged, Pop art zeitgeist, in-your-face, “Look at this!” writer for the paper’s Sunday magazine (which would continue on its own as New York magazine after the newspaper itself ceased publication). He even moved up to the daily paper itself as a columnist, alongside Jimmy Breslin.

Quite simply, he was fun to read.

Maybe it was a reflection of his Manhattan success or the counterculture themes he picked up on, but Wolfe created a marketable visual image as a dandy in a white, often three-piece, suit, with oversized glasses. He was about getting attention for himself, counter to the usual advice to reporters to make themselves invisible so they could more objectively view the events unfolding before them.

Not so, Tom. Or, in my case, with the college prof who thought I’d be the next Tom Wolfe.

His Electric-Acid Kool-Aid Test, following Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters as avatars of LSD, became a bestselling sensation leading memorably to the Right Stuff about astronauts.

Apart from this writing style, he knew how to sniff out a trend. In contrast, I ultimately went counter-trend.

I do wonder how much he influenced me. Perhaps in Subway Visions.

As for others, Hunter Thompson seems to have most closely built on the legacy.

By the way, the novelist Wolfe was notorious for excess writing, too, though of a masterly sort.

As for the Herald Trib, you can get a taste of it in my post “Establishing my creds” of September 11, 2014.

More than my life changed since retiring from the newsroom

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a dozen years since I left full-time employment, but I can say I still don’t know what “retirement” is. Could it be because I don’t play golf or tennis?

After years of hoping to be financially able to leave the newsroom and instead concentrate on a life as an author, I finally made it to freedom. In the years leading up to that, I had put together detailed plans of running on a tight schedule, rising to meditate and pray, do some yoga, attend to correspondence, tackle some heavy new writing, and so on, but that’s not how things turned out. At least guilt hasn’t kicked in. I haven’t exactly been a slacker.

In those earlier schemes, I didn’t envision swimming laps every day at the city’s indoor pool or my weekly trip to Boston to sing in a choir. Nor was self-publishing the novels and poetry or the expanse of blogging or other social media. Photography, even of a digital sort, was an unexpected new hobby. Yearly Meeting responsibilities, however, were on the list and duly enjoyed. I’m embarrassed to admit that many yoga exercises are now beyond me – it’s amazing what 50 years of physical neglect can do.

I’m still trying to discover my natural sleep cycle, too. Eastport is a place where most folks rise early, and that’s generally what I’m doing – often, 3 am in the summer and a bit later in winter. The roads around here are busier at 5:30 in the morning than at 5:30 in the late afternoon or evening. A nap helps but isn’t always a daily option. And I’m spending more time at the keyboard than is probably healthy.

~*~

The most obvious way my life changed my writing life was is in having longer periods where I could concentrate on a given work or project. I wasn’t writing on the fly, like graffiti, as I have quipped, or immersing myself for a vacation week or two and then reluctantly putting the manuscript aside. My attention wasn’t diverted as often, either. I no longer had the daily commutes as time for reflection, but it’s amazing what bubbled up as a swam my half-mile of laps – some of my favorite lines in What’s Left, especially.

No longer writing or revising on the fly apparently made my new work more difficult.

At the beginning of my new life, I took up blogging, first to clear out much of my backlog of writing and small-press first publications, and then the photography came forward. One blog became five. Networking face-to-face with other writers once a month was on my rounds, and there were other events for poets, too. That led to the release of most of my scripted fiction, a huge emotional relief.

Curiously, I haven’t written poetry. The focus has been on prose, especially my one new novel, What’s Left. You’d think in my expanded creative schedule combined with my earlier experience of shaping fiction, this would have been a breeze. Instead, it was the thorniest project. Its purpose was to wrap up the hippie era, drawing together my Kenzie stories. The book kept shifting focus, and even finding an appropriate title was elusive. (A cover image was even more problematic.) It was also the least autobiographical, even with the new Greek-Orthodox circle in my life.

I can’t say which of my novels underwent the most exhaustive transformation from their first published version to the way they stand now, but What’s Left was the most painful as well as the biggest turning point. None of the others changed that drastically from their starting point to what hit print. The changes from first published version to what now stands is another matter.

But What’s Left did prompt that deep reworking of all the earlier ones, as well as the big round of republication.

My other piece of new fiction was perhaps the easiest of all, the middle novella in the Secret Side of Jaya. This was set between two earlier ones that had undergone multiple revisions before I inserted Jaya as a unifying voice.

~*~

If I thought I could kick back after those revisions, I was mistaken. Quaking Dover was on the horizon.

It was the book I didn’t want to write, I was truly tired, but the one that’s carried me the farthest with readers. It wasn’t even fiction.

And it proved as difficult in its revisions as What’s Left had. There was the challenge of fitting myself into the text as the “gently laughing curmudgeon” that one insightful beta reader suggested. It ran counter to all of my journalistic training as a neutral observer and my yoga humility of rendering myself invisible.

When I undertook Quaking Dover, Covid broke out. My laps in the pool ended, as did Revels Singers in Boston. After finishing the first draft, I relocated to Way Downeast Maine in what became an ideal writer’s retreat. It was amazing what I could find online in my research and revision.

As I’ve said, our move was the next step in some necessary downsizing in our life. Over the past decade, I’ve shifted to the Web and am now largely paper-free. I am going to have to face considerably more purging when we get the rest of my book collection out of storage and try to fit what we can (or what I need) into this smaller house. And let’s not forget, there’s no barn here.

~*~

Quaking Dover did lead to live and streamed PowerPoint presentations, a further new skillset for me.

Among other things, my concentration isn’t what it was. I learned in a few months of working as a 2020 Census enumerator that my stamina has also faded – it was an exhausting job. My spelling’s declined. And I’m not as sharp-eyed as an editor, either. In fact, I’m more tolerant.

I’m reading mostly ebooks, avoiding the filled shelves conundrum.

I don’t feel an urgency trying to “understand my problem.”

Even the journaling is slowing.

And there was a round of renewed therapy, ending shortly before the death of my therapist.