I find this image, from Wong Kar Wai’s latest film The Grandmaster, ravishing.
Click on the image to enlarge.
IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR
With thanks to Ron Salvatore . . .
Click on the image to enlarge.
A NEW AMAZON CUSTOMER REVIEW
Great Western novella
I bought this book on a recommendation from a friend and enjoyed it, mainly because it’s brief, it’s concise, it’s thrilling and believable and doesn’t talk down to the reader; everything that fiction should be.
Missouri Green is a Western, revolving around the eponymous protagonist, a New Orleans prostitute who tires of her job and decides to make the perilous journey west to California. To help her survive the journey and mine for gold, she buys herself a slave named Jim, a highly-skilled outdoorsman. I can’t help but see this as a blatant reference to Huckleberry Finn, not only because Missouri constantly calls him “N***** Jim,” but because a big part of the plot concerns her learning to respect Jim and view him as a smart, loyal human being.
Jim himself is depicted with more complexity and depth than you typically get from characters like him. He begins the novel openly resentful of Missouri and even comes close to murdering her a couple of times. None of this feels forced, though, thanks to Fonvielle’s crisp, unpretentious style and economical use of words (the book can be read in less than an hour).
I subtracted one star from the book because of the ending, where the book starts to come apart, but otherwise, Missouri Green is worth a look even if you aren’t normally into this kind of genre fiction.
You can buy the book here for only $1.99 — Missouri Green. Kindle owners who subscribe to Amazon Prime can borrow it for free.
PROGRESS REPORT
At the heart of my short novel Circus are two young women, Beth and Anne, The Kelly Twins. They are trapeze artists, brilliant and beautiful. One of them is bitter and malicious, one of them is saintly — but when they fly together, they seem to share a single mind, a single heart, even a single soul.
No one who knows them only on the ground knows them at all, and the adoring men who watch them from the sawdust below, flying together, fall in love with a great mystery.
Click on the images to enlarge.
CLARA BOW
POOR BABY
On location in Canada for River Of No Return, where she sprained her ankle on a slippery rock in a stream.
Click on the image to enlarge.
A CIRCUS POSTER FOR TODAY
Click on the image to enlarge.
ANOTHER SELF PORTRAIT
Oh, my goodness . . .
THE MIRACLE OF CREATION
Click on the image to enlarge.
AUDREY
Click on the image to enlarge.
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.]
Click on the images to enlarge.
INCONTROVERTIBLE PROOF
. . . of the existence of God.
Click on the image to enlarge.
NEW YORK, 1969
. . . in a nutshell.
Click on the image to enlarge.
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.
Click on the images to enlarge.