Sometimes a cigar is just....
February 8, 2008
Well, I carried the Monte Cristo No. 4 around with me for two days, hoping for a respite from the cold, a break from the weather…a warm patch that would last long enough for me to smoke this cigar at my leisure. Didn’t happen. The cigar is back in the humidor.
Cigars….I have a novel started about a man who meets a prostitute named Dolly Varden once a week to smoke cigars in a hotel room. I love this name…Dolly Varden. It’s actually the name of a fish, the “Dolly Varden char, or trout” and I saw it on a sign for a trail somewhere in the B.C. Rockies. Anyway, this man, Wallace, brings two new cigars each week and teaches her about cigars. It’s not about sex. They talk about life without veering directly into their own lives. They tell stories to each other. And it’s not Pretty Woman. Wallace does not want to save Dolly. Though Dolly does need saving.
”Grey Man Down” is the title of another project I’ve got sitting on the back-burner until the new novel is in place with a publisher, or it’s been thoroughly rejected.
I’ve been reading a lot lately. A lot! And I’ve been having discussions with the Louster about what exactly a literary novel is. There are many ways to slice a book….to define it. Trade fiction. Paperback. Plot fiction. Mainstream. Literary. The list goes on. If I feel like I’ve eaten a whole meal and it’s been entertaining but I just don’t feel full, it’s likely not literary. I like the attempt to grapple with subtext, theme, to make some comment on the human condition….even if it fails. And I like a good Grisham page-turner every now and then too. I don’t have a definitive answer to the question: what is literary? But I think the books that endure do two things: 1) they capture the imagination of readers with a great story an engaging plot, and 2) they shine a light on humanity. Of course, you can't go out and try to do this -- you just write with these things lurking in the back room...
The Dude abides.
9 Comments
1. mary had this to say: Feb 08, 2008 ~ 10:45 ~ #
did you know that there is also a band called “dolly varden”? i saw them once when i lived in missouri, weird huh? i they referenced a dicken’s character or something in getting their name. i can’t remember though….
2. lisa b had this to say: Feb 10, 2008 ~ 19:36 ~ #
I’m still thinking about the light you were shining in Doubting Yourself to the Bone.
I can’t wait to meet Dolly and Wallace.
3. thomas had this to say: Feb 11, 2008 ~ 08:13 ~ #
Mary,
Dolly Varden is a name rich in meaning….and history. The Dickens name — the girl was “...a vain, flirtatious girl who wore colorful clothes, with a distinctive calico pattern.” I’m still in love with the name….
Lisa b,
Thanks! Dolly and Wallace are forming….circling around each other…sizing each other up. I’ve no idea what’s going to happen to them. I was telling Cindy-Lou that I’d like to write a book in which nobody dies…but…sometimes these things happen whether I want them to or not.
Thomas
4. Mike had this to say: Feb 12, 2008 ~ 10:35 ~ #
I would read that novel only if Wallace was savagely murdered by Dolly in the end. Someone HAS to die, Thomas. It is the way of things.
5. mary had this to say: Feb 12, 2008 ~ 12:23 ~ #
please, i beg you, no dolly varden murders….it just cannot be the way of things. dolly varden is too eccentric and flamboyant to commit savage murders…wallace should just get an ice pick in the eye while building an ice fishing shelter…that is nicer
7. dolly varden had this to say: Feb 17, 2008 ~ 01:51 ~ #
and again, i am forced to repeat: “stay out of malibu lebowski!” and i also forced to add, “the bums always lose. the bums always lose, lebowski.”....
PS thomas said you could take any rug in the place!