Wednesday, July 26, 2006

A Hankering For Prose

I have developed a hankering to do a bit of prose writing tonight. I used to do it all the time, have written first drafts of numerous unpublished novels and half-finished others. I became the king of the novel title, at least in the sense that I accumulated many of them, even though I probably never wrote a great novel. How good they sound to me now: OUT OF CONTROL, A SENSE OF FAIR PLAY (in which a private detective fell in love with a dead woman), JOHN AND JUNK CULTURE, GRINGOS, PEOPLE OF THE SHADOWS, MR. NO ONE, WELCOME TO ARCHAIDIA, FLIPPED, FENARIO, THE BLACK ANGEL'S DEATH SONG. And a few of them survive.
Tonight, though, talking to my friend, the idea came up that I might write a memoir/ autobiography focussing on all of the weirdness (how do you spell that? my dictionary is upstairs) that has happened in my life. It's not a bad idea. Long unemployment, hanging out with Communists and Anarchists, meeting poets, getting entangled with a mentally ill relative and watching her mind fall apart, the suicide of a friend who screwed my girlfriend, four years waiting for my last girlfriend to leave her husband. And so much more. If I could find a way to put all that in a book it would make the weirdest story ever told. In fact, that might even be the title. I'm going to think about this for a while and see what I come up with, though I'm reluctant in a way to invest the time and effort when in all likelihood I'll never be able to sell the book anyway.

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