three a.m.

I recently finished a draft of a story about a guy who shoots a lion in rural Arkansas.  I felt   compelled, if only because a similar event really happened and to my knowledge nobody has written about how weird that is.  I don’t think that came across in my story either — maybe the next draft.  I couldn’t resist the urge to make it kind of silly.  I like Hemingway as much as the next guy, but…then I found this funny graphic on the web.  (I was trying to find photos of lion shit — you know, for descriptive purposes?)  You can actually get T-shirts with that logo for about 7 bucks. 

Then I read the new George Saunders novella, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, an allegory about war and human nature, played out by characters whose bodies are composed of tuna cans, sliding brains, multiple mustaches, etc. People are comparing it to 1984, I guess because they don’t know what else to compare it to.   It has nice illustrations, but I think Saunders outweirded himself.  It reads like a parody of Saunders best work (of which I’m a fan).   It made me want to write something realistic, or at least something harder to ignore than a story about alcoholics and lions.  (Although alcoholics and lions are much more difficult to ignore in the flesh!)  Anyways, that Saunders guy has been on a roll for too long, so I guess it’s a little satisfying to see him put out a clunker. 

All right — I’m going to take Joel’s advice and finish Moby Dick.  Good, serious, whale-slaughtering literature.  I just saw on Amazon where a reader claims that Melville most resembles Shakespeare.  I better think about something else, or this is going to turn into a bad day.

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