Languages and linguistics in writing

I took a weekend Spanish class a few weeks ago in Ensenada. I thought it was about time and I was pleasantly surprised that some of my Latin from high school days helped out. The structure and genders are similar. But at first it's a lot to take in and it can be confusing. But I believe everyone should push themselves to learn new things, especially when it involves a culture that is foreign to you.

Now I'm in San Migeul de Allende, and after a wild long weekend that included dancing until dawn, meeting some German, Israeli, British, Canadian and Mexican people, and ending up with a big Super Bowl party at a popular local gringo's palatial home. It was tons of American food, some frijoles, beer, booze and big screen football: Fun, fun, fun!

But today I started a new Spanish class. Not only do I want to learn to communicate with Spanish speakers, but also I want to stimulate the verbal part of my brain.

One thing you soon realize when you start to take a foreign language is that some things just don't translate exactly: they have a meaning unique to that language.

So I think it's good to learn other languages, a writer might find a new word that is just perfect for a particular passage.

How Should You Write?

Aspiring writers must search for their voice. Test, try, experiment, adjust. Finding a voice can be one of the most arduous tasks for a writer, but once it appears and sharpens, (and only then), should a writer go about producing published works aggressively. That's not to say that a writing voice cannot evolve, it most certainly must as the writer grows, learns and develops.

For me, sitting down and writing my Hurricane Katrina book in 3 1/2 weeks crystallized my voice; at least it sent me well on my way.

Today, short bursts, as found in blogs, can help shape a writer's voice too. Sometimes you shouldn't think too much -- just let it flow.

Generally, I prefer an economical style, where significant effort is put into writing concise sentences that convey powerful meaning without wasted words. But also, sometimes, a long, flowery sentence is called for: it is the only approach that will fit for the art of the story, and its rhythm is called for at precisely that point in the work.

Bukowski, if you read his novels, opines that a sentence should be as short and full of punch as possible. He believed that all those extra adjectives and long sentences and paragraphs merely mask the fact that a writer can't find the precise words they are looking for, so they hope the reader will somehow find the meaning the writer intends in a puffy, vague sentence.

If you read Hemingway, his prose is noticeably terse and efficient, but now and then he departs from his usual style. F. Scott Fitzgerald does it naturally and perfectly, only using a few extra words when they are absolutely needed, to add to the richness of the story and lyricism of the sentence and paragraph. Flaubert and Checkov are also economical in their use of prose.

That is not to say that there is only one way to write. Take Tom Robbins, for instance. He developed his own style. He leans toward using long sentences and fabulously obscure words. But it works. And as Robbins said, "In fiction, there are no rules. That's what I have against 'teaching writing' in academia. In fiction, what works, works."

And take Kerouac: he found his voice by writing quickly, nonstop, tapping his brain (and some amphetamines at times) to rattle out stream-of-consciousness truths. Of course, he meticulously revised his work, although he didn't let that fact out much.

A writer should try different approaches. William Burroughs even experimented with physically cutting out words and sentences and moving them around, pasting them where they really didn't belong -- all in the interest of discovering a new way to construct words. I believe it is the writer's responsibility to use words in ways they have never been used, or even to invent new words or forms of words. Hey, Shakespeare did it. Supposedly he used a vocabulary of 20,000 words, some of which hadn't been invented yet. The average person might have a vocabulary of 4,000-5,000 words.

Another unique writer was John Kennedy Toole (A Confederacy of Dunces), who had a brilliant style all his own, full of juicy descriptions that hit the mark. No one can imitate his work!

You should go out and find your style, your voice. And you do that by writing, writing, writing. But the absolute worst thing you can do is to try to imitate another writer. That only makes for pathetic reading.

So, what is a writer? One who writes (not one who quotes others' writing or simply talks about writing).

Chekhov Was A Funny MoFo

I'm reading some of Anton Chekhov's stories. You wouldn't think a Russian author would be comedic, but he weaves his smart-ass dark humor into many of his stories; but also, he seems to write about disease and death quite a bit too. Maybe that's because he trained to be a doctor first.

Here's a funny opening line from Rothschild's Fiddle, a story about a casket maker: "The town was small, worse than a village, and in it lived almost none but old people, who died so rarely it was even annoying."

Another story called, Sleepy really draws you in, your eyelids may get heavy, but then he just shocks you at the end with a horrifying act. Chekhov had a wonderfully sick mind, and he could write with such vividness that it makes his writing very powerful.

In New Orleans when I was talking with the novelist Richard Ford, he talked about teaching a writing class at NYU, and that he really didn't talk about writing; he just had the students read good writing, like Chekhov. So that piqued my interest in reading him -- even if it did sound highfalutin at first.

Another thing Richard Ford said, "You have to leave a place to write about it." He went on to say that when you live in a place you are "too locked in to the grid of it" and that when you get away you remember only the important details, with the proper perspective. I thought about it and figured he was right. Since I was writing my New Orleans novel (something he said he'd never write about because it was "just too hard, too difficult to capture any better than has already been done") I decided I'd leave, for the sake of the work.

And he was right.

Chekhov died young of tuberculosis -- being a doctor he delayed going to one -- and it reminds me of Walker Percy, who also had TB, and wrote most of his works lying down.

Walker Percy, the Pulitzer-prize winner who edited A Confederacy of Dunces, like Ford, said you had to leave New Orleans to write (he moved across the lake into the country) and that the French Quarter was great for inspiration, but you couldn't get anything done there, succumbing to "French Quarter disease," meaning the alcoholic-artistic inertia that hits most people there keeps them from producing.

And he was right.

The Greatest Kind of Writing

More about my new writer/filmmaker friend Roman: about 15 years ago he was the most prominent journalist in Croatia, so much so that the cafes and bars would bubble with discussion about his bold and controversial columns.

Then he wrote "the one" that made him "Public Enemy No. 1" of the totalitarian regime. He called for the political overthrow of the government, a peaceful, legal overthrow -- not a military coup (I read the translated column online). He pointed out their greedy, criminal, murderous ways to the public. And unlike previous columns he'd written, there was dead silence. No letters, phone calls, no discussion or opinions from his readers.

The government stated that his dissent must be stopped, and then they killed his wife with a car bomb. Then Roman had to scurry at night from friendly house to house, hiding while they tried to track him down. When war broke out, he saw his friends killed and wild pigs let loose in the streets to eat the flesh of the freshly dead, while Serbian snipers waited at the ready on rooftops. So the dead could not be retrieved without risking additional deaths. Ten of his friends decided they'd make a go for it, calling him a coward for not wanting to. They ran out, and seven of them were shot dead within seconds.

Some more of his friends were crucified, actually nailed to trees alive, with a booby-trap grenade rigged so they couldn't be moved, or anyone within 100 meters would be killed from the blast. "Can you imagine watching your best friends nailed up there, dying slowly in agony, and there is nothing you can do?" he asked me.

It was not until the Americans came, with advanced technology and tactics, and they were able to drill delicately through the back of the trees to defuse the grenades and let some men down. Even baby Croat boys were killed, or the breasts of the mother were carved off so the baby would starve and die.

Can you imagine what hate would propagate such acts?

He was eventually able to slip out of the country to the United States. To gain US political asylum, you must "prove" that you would be killed if you returned to your native country. So, the CIA agents and immigration officials questioned him at length, and then a CIA agent asked the final question, "How can you prove you'd be killed if you return?"

Roman pulled out an internal CIA report stamped, "Top Secret." It stated, quite simply, that he, Roman "XXXX", the dissident journalist, would be killed by the Croatian government if he were found. The agent asked, "How did you get this document?"

"What? You guys think you are the only spies? It's a war! Everyone is a spy."

His political asylum was granted.

I have the deepest respect for Roman. He had the courage to write the truth, and ultimately, when the totalitarian Croatian government came down, his writing helped change the world.

That is the greatest kind of writing.

Reading and Writing in San Miguel

I finished reading Carolyn Cassady's Off the Road and wow, did she put up with a lot of crap from Neal, mostly philandering but also drugs, gambling, jail, etc. And catching Allen Ginsberg blowing her husband. But she was no angel either: she was having an affair with Jack Kerouac while he stayed in the attic of their house.

It sort of amazing how intimately intertwined Kerouac, Cassady and Ginsberg's lives were.

I came to SMA to do a final edit on my novel. I got about halfway through it, did some good work, but got distracted with drinking, carousing, playing basketball, yoga, and life. I do think I've got the final solution for the ending chapters, thanks to a local 'advance reader.'

My new friend Roman is suggesting I do an Eastern European book tour, and the idea has grabbed me, so I've done some quick research and found the prominent English language bookshops over there. Roman says that they are hungry for American writers, to hear about American politics and views, so it'd be a more special trip than just doing an American tour. And it would be an unforgettable experience!

Neal Cassady and the Beats

Last Saturday evening in San Miguel de Allende I attended a celebration of the Beat poets. Neal Cassady, the catalyst who changed the direction of Jack Kerouac's writing -- to the more free flowing, stream of consciousness Beat style -- breathed his last breath here. He'd been to a wedding and probably took some downers that night, where he expired by the railroad tracks.

His son, John Allen Cassady, was named for Cassady's two best friends, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Kerouac's first name was actually Jean, pronounced almost like 'John' -- so why didn't he name him "Jack Allen Cassady" you ask? Well, Neal Cassady said, "If you say Jack Cassady fast, it sounds like Jackass-ady; and no one is going to call my son a jackass!" John Allen Cassady, who is now in his late 50s, returned to grace the local literary group with some funny stories of his father, who died when John Cassady was just 16.

The evening began with a couple of speakers providing a summary of the history of the Beats, and particularly the development of their friendship and writing, and their ventures to Mexico.

"Don't do what I did, 20 years of fast-living and my kids are all screwed up," Neal Cassady had said. But his son, John, a blond-haired man with a beard, bushy eyebrows and a sunny disposition, has nothing but fond and humorous memories of his father. When I asked him about what his father had said about screwing up his kids, John said, 'Well, my dad was very protective. He cared for us very much."

John Cassady went on to talk about the funny things his father did to entertain the kids, and how he never said an unkind thing to them -- or anyone else. On one trip to Mexico he brought back a small wooden pig that had a removable plug for a tail. "Watch this!" Neal said to his kids. He went and got a flyswatter, and swatted a fly, not killing it, but just stunning the fly. Then he pulled the tail-plug from the little toy pig, inserted the dazed fly and replaced the tail. As the fly came to, the pig's legs started to move and soon it was dancing on the table. The kids were delighted! John said, "That was funny, but what's even funnier is, 'Who is the Mexican who thought of this in the first place!?'"

John's mother, Carolyn, was left to be the disciplinarian. You'd think that a kid who smoked mota with his father and accompanied him to the bars while still in elementary school would be all messed up. But John Cassady is a happy man, a shining, jovial light who is and always was, very proud of his parents.

I approached John after dinner with his mother's book, Off the Road: Twenty Years with Cassady, Kerouac & Ginsberg. Before he signed it for me, he flipped to a picture of his dad in his prime and said, "Look at my dad. Look what a handsome devil he was!" Then he flipped to his mother's 1946 picture, a stunning profile of a classic blonde, and commented boyishly, "Look at how beautiful my mom was!" John was supposed to be shuffled off to speak on the closing panel, and the event organizers were getting impatient, so I took a picture of John signing my book, we shook hands and I left, treasuring the moment.

Seriously, John had the experience of learning the guitar from Jerry Garcia (Garcia credited Cassady for the formation of the Grateful Dead), he knew Kerouac and Ginsberg as his father's friends, so how cool is that? In one aside, John said that Garcia told him as a teenager not to use a certain album as a guide to the Grateful Dead's music style, "We were speeding and played the whole thing in triple time!"

Also speaking that evening was George Walker, one of the Merry Pranksters whose nickname was "Hardly Visible." He's a colorful man, wearing bright hippie colors topped by a knit skullcap, and he had some colorful stories about LSD-laced cross-country bus rides and wild trips to Mexico. Mostly the stories had to do with getting high, having fun, and barely escaping the Mexican police!

Literary Serendipity

A couple of days ago I was at my friend's restaurant in Playas de Tijuana, sitting outside, drinking a cold Tecate draft beer and watching the sunset. I like to make it a point to watch sunsets over the ocean. It gives me some sort of vital energy and inspiration. There was only one other customer there, and he was inside under the palapa roof where it is nice, but there isn't a view. The man looked like a dead ringer for a younger Francis Ford Coppola, with a bushy beard, and mad, creative eyes.

As the sun began to set the man came out by my table and we both were watching the sunset. "Do you mind if I sit here with you?" he asked in a thick Eastern European accent. So we sat in silence and then he said, "Isn't it amazing, isn't it wonderful that we as humans are drawn to the beauty of nature? And that each sunset is unique?"

Marveling at the natural beauty before us we began to chat. I told him I am a writer. "Published?" he asked.
"Yes." And I went on to describe my books, then asked him where he was from.
"Croatia," he replied.
"Oh, there have some good basketball players that come from over there, don't they?" I asked.
"They used to," he replied.
"What is your name?" I asked.
"Roman."

He had lived in Rio de Janeiro and he told me that the women there were beyond the most beautiful women you have ever seen: even better than Cuban beauties. "And they fall in love with you, right away!" About ten minutes into the conversation he said, "I am a writer, and I am published too -- just not in English. This is my problem: I can speak it but I do not know the grammar very well. But I have a screenplay and I am working with the most powerful screenwriter in Hollywood. He is behind many major movie projects."

Roman told me he used to be a millionaire in the computer business in New York City until "they stole it from me" and he ended up homeless. Down and out, he wrote to the noted screenwriter and he replied. Roman ended up scraping up enough to come out to the West Coast and the noted screenwriter critiqued his screenplay, ripping it to shreds.

"He told me to get rid of my main character! I couldn't believe it!" Roman cried.

We talked about how that feels when someone gives you a stinging critique and at first you resent it deeply -- it just pisses you off. It's like someone telling you that your kid is stupid and ugly.

But then, if you really, really think you begin to realize that person did you a great favor, and they were right. And you can start the re-write and make the script much better than before. That's what F. Ray Mouton (Pamplona) did for me last year when I thought I was done with my novel. He did the same thing a few years ago with my "Brando" play, and ultimately, he was dead on and I was spurred to greater heights.

Roman then stopped the conversation and said, "Excuse me, I just want to catch the last of this sunset." Of course, I did too.

So we sat in silence and admired the glorious last rays settle over the expanse of the sea.

Walking home I thought, "It's not every day that you meet a Croatian screenwriter in Mexico."