Race Point Light is my third novel, and it is about a man finding out that, when his culture wants to destroy him, his first duty is to protect himself, and his next is to change his culture. Here is an excerpt from Race Point Light. The narrator is Fair Shaw is twenty years old, a private in the US Army, the year is 196o. Shaw is about to be discharged. Just before I got out, a new group of … [Read more...]
My books, money, value, the somber truth
I read an article on Slate today on writing and money, and it compels me to respond. The point of the article is the fact that so few writers actually make any money at their writing. Just about all writers are supported by doing something else, like teaching, and yet it seems that just about everybody is confused about what confers worth on a book. Do sales confer worth? Do reviews? Publishing … [Read more...]
And I alone am escaped to tell thee
Elie Wiesel, who died this week, said in his Nobel Prize speech, “I have tried to keep memory alive […] I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.” But it’s worse than that. If we forget what has happened to us, we forget what we have done, and we can’t know ourselves. The Federal Writers Project of the Works Project Administration of … [Read more...]
She says, “We stand with you.”
Amazing things have been happening in the last four days. Last week, the Department of Justice delivered a five-day ultimatum to the Governor and State of North Carolina and the University of North Carolina, and others, which fell due Monday. Instead of giving in and promising they would not enforce HB2, on Monday the Governor and the state filed a suit against the feds. Later that morning, … [Read more...]
Jeff’s and Mike’s one family
Jeff Zirpolo died this week—C’s colleague, our friend—whom we have known since early in the AIDS years. The wake was on Thursday in Watertown. There were about a hundred people there, his birth family—his brothers and his sisters-in-law, and his sister and his brother-in-law, a number of nephews and nieces—who called him “Mike,” and us, his friends in the bear community in metropolitan Boston, who … [Read more...]