Monthly Archives: July 2013
POOR BABY
On location in Canada for River Of No Return, where she sprained her ankle on a slippery rock in a stream.
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A CIRCUS POSTER FOR TODAY
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ANOTHER SELF PORTRAIT
Oh, my goodness . . .
THE MIRACLE OF CREATION
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AUDREY
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GLORY DAYS
The online magazine American Circus has just published a short essay I wrote about my experience of playing baseball in Yankee Stadium:
Check it out.
[As the postcard notes, the photo of me in Yankee Stadium is by Cotty Chubb.]
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INCONTROVERTIBLE PROOF
. . . of the existence of God.
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NEW YORK, 1969
. . . in a nutshell.
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POTATO HEAD BLUES
In my short novel Circus, at Greenbaugh’s Majestic Circus, in the Colored Performers’ Dressing Tent, the guys, including the members of Greenbaugh’s Famous Darkie Orchestra, like to listen to Pops, this song in particular, on a portable Victrola, when getting ready for a show.
Life in the circus during the Depression was rough on everybody, but roughest on the performers of color. Pops gave them courage and hope.
PROGRESS REPORT
Switching to a third-person narrator has opened the floodgates on Circus, my short novel in progress. I’m able to jump between multiple storylines at will, which is keeping the narrative lively, at least for me.
Circus is a crazy tale — part romance, part Grand Guignol thriller . . . like an extravagant silent movie scenario. The circus itself is so surreal and over-the-top that it seems to demand lurid melodrama when telling a story about its backstage dramas and intrigues.
In any case, it suits my mood and is giving me a thrill a minute.
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WELL DO YOU, PUNK?
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A PULP MAGAZINE COVER FOR TODAY
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THE DARKTOWN STRUTTERS’ BALL
This song was a favorite of Chief Tam-Tam, from West Africa — leader, in 1935, of the “Ubangi” troupe in Greenbaugh’s Majestic Circus, in my short novel Circus. Tam was homesick and often drunk, dreaming of going back to the old country, but he had a “special friend” at the colored whorehouse in Wichita, Kansas and every time the circus played that town, she took all his money, leaving him no choice but to stay with the show.
A CIRCUS POSTER FOR TODAY
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