Today is a long-overdue Clean Out the Office day. My office is the only room in the house that still has stuff in cardboard boxes and doesn't feel especially homey (because, I suspect, I have not yet used it for its intended purpose). Things have gotten a little out of control, though, and it's time to shred the old bank statements and throw out the boxes I thought I might need for eBay and put all the forensics books back on the shelf where Winston likes to get behind them and play peekaboo, ultimately sending a half-dozen or more gory titles cascading to the floor.

As some of you who have received personalized books back from me three months after sending them may know, packages sent to my P.O. box occasionally get lost in this office, especially when Chris picks them up and brings them home and I tell him distractedly, "Oh, just put them over there for now," not specifying where "there" might be. I've just unearthed one containing a signed, personalized (at the National Book Festival) copy of Paul Theroux's latest travel book, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, sent to me by the always thoughtful and generous Carl Kesner. Thank you, Carl! I hope you're doing well.

We just drove up to Riverbend to fill our fancy new cooler with ice at a friend's restaurant. Uptown streets are almost deserted, businesses closed, windows everywhere blinded with plywood. The "mayor" is, I believe, issuing a mandatory evacuation order even as I type. Contraflow on the highways begins at 6:00 AM tomorrow. Chris and I are nestled in cozily, like bugs in a knothole, on edge but prepared (and slightly, inappropriately euphoric). The cats are calm. The weather is gorgeous, though very hot.

Dammit, I meant to pick up the new Paul Theroux book before all this shit went down. I got nice bright camping lanterns so I wouldn't be caught without a reading light this time. Of all the creature comforts we lacked in early September of 2005 -- air conditioning, hot showers, hot food (except those scary MREs), clean clothes, flushing toilets -- I think that bothered me most of all, because, as Stephen King reminds us, "book-Valium" is one of the best drugs in existence.

Some days I wonder how much longer I'll keep up this blog -- it has brought me so many wonderful things, but it seems vaguely dishonest to be writing this and nothing else -- but some days it feels good to just sit down and babble about what's been pissing me off, or interesting me, or nothing in particular. There is one question I've been meaning to answer -- someone recently asked why I don't like The Pogues. I can't remember who asked or even whether it was in an e-mail or a community post or what, but I figure I may as well reply as best I can, which isn't all that well because, you know, de gustibus non disputandum est. I'm not sure I can explain why I like or dislike music any more than I can explain why I like purple and dislike yellow. I just don't like the way they sound. They do not provide pleasure to my ears. It isn't a vendetta or anything; I don't feel a rush of loathing when I see a picture of Shane McGowan. In other words, they are not my musical Jacques-Imo's. Given the slightest opportunity, I will try to persuade people not to eat at Jacques-Imo's; I will smear the reputation of their loathsome food every chance I get; I would be happy to see them shut down, even in this period where New Orleans needs all the successful businesses it can get, because I think they are dishonest about New Orleans and reflect our food and culture in a shoddy, ugly light. I can't think of any band (or, for that matter, even any writer) I feel that strongly about. I don't care if other people listen to The Pogues as long as they don't try to make me listen. I don't sit around hoping The Pogues will break up (they may have already done so; I don't know). They just aren't to my taste, and I can't recall mentioning them in this journal more than a couple of times, while anyone with a good global search function could probably find enough mentions of Jacques-Imo's to convince them I was quite mad on the subject, which I probably am.

Anyway, I'm sorry I don't remember who answered the question and I'm not sure why s/he asked it, but I remember that it was asked in a nice context, so here is your answer.

Also, according to the unfortunately titled but entertaining travel book Getting Stoned with Savages by J. Maarten Troost, there are foot-long, aggressive, poisonous centipedes in Vanuatu, and not only that, but if you cut them in half, both halves will come after you -- you must chop them into pieces and crush every piece as thoroughly as possible. As much as I love Paul Theroux, I tend to feel he should be flogged for failing to mention this in The Happy Isles of Oceania, because what if I had gone to Vanuatu and not known? Thank you for the warning, J. Maarten; if I ever make it to the south Pacific, it will still be chilly, remote, relatively wildlife-less Easter Island for me. However, I do wish some intrepid fact-checker had managed to clue you in to the fact that centipedes are not "insects." If you're that fixated on number of legs, you really should know the difference.

I'm not really the domestic type; nor do I care terribly much about clothes ... so it's hard to explain why, not having had my own functioning washer and dryer for nineteen months, doing laundry in my own house is such a decadent pleasure. I also enjoyed hammering together a bookcase around midnight without having to worry about the noise bothering anybody. The houses on either side of us aren't occupied yet (though I've met both neighbors and they are coming back), but it's not lonely or spooky because it's the hood, where people stay up late and are on the streets until all hours. I'm even beginning to warm up to the nightclub on the corner, which is only loud about once a week. If I ever said I lived in the hood before, I was lying or deluding myself. I really do live in it now and I think I am going to love it. Not being able to hang out a garden hose seems a small enough price to pay. (Did I tell you somebody stole our hose? Chris saw me hanging it and said, "Somebody's gonna steal that." I laughed at him, because who would ever bother to steal a garden hose? Two days later it was gone.)

I don't remember if I've posted information about our neighborhood. It still feels like Uptown because we're only a few blocks off St. Charles, but officially we are now residents of Central City, or will be in a few more days.

While the clothes were laundering, I listened to basketball on the radio (Carolina advances to the Elite Eight!) and shelved books. All my fiction is on the shelves now, except what we have to bring over from the apartment. I put out the cookbooks and the food books and started on a new system for arranging my ridiculously huge assortment of travel literature* with one of those old-school Dymo labelers. I had a fetish for Dymo labelers when I was 7 or 8, but had forgotten all about them until I saw one at Office Depot last week. I was tempted to alphabetize the Europe section as "Yerp," à la Paul Theroux at his snarkiest**, but did not succumb.

My book collection in general is absurd. I hadn't realized how much so because I'd never actually seen it all arranged properly on the shelves before. I love Thomas Ligotti, but that's no reason to own three copies of Grimscribe and four copies of Songs of a Dead Dreamer. I love Peter Straub, but that's no reason to own two copies of At the Foot of the Story Tree, the limited-edition (and excellent) critique of his work by Bill Sheehan, and three different states of Mr. X, though it is one of my all-time favorites among his novels. Once I get eBay up and running again, some of this stuff is going on it.

On the other hand, what to do with, say, the battered copy of The Catcher in the Rye I bought when I was twelve? I read it to death and have since purchased a nice hardcover edition, but I can't throw away that old maroon paperback -- you know the one. I suppose I am destined to always have too many books.

Also, I decided that, after eighteen years, it's time to integrate Chris' and my book collections. Previously, only our cookbooks and food books were shelved together, which probably says something about our relationship. He lost most of his fiction in the flood -- it was the only bookcase in the basement, where he used to keep a sort of squalid little office -- but his Italo Calvino will henceforth be shelved beside my Ramsey Campbell, and his hippie wanderer books among my travel (I found something called How to Make Travel Sacred, as if one needs a manual for that), and so on.

* The fact that I require nine feet of shelving just for books on polar expeditions and Himalayan climbing may tell you something about the sheer absurdity of my travel library.

** Rich American tourist to Paul Theroux (somewhere in the South Pacific, if memory serves me right): "If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go? Don't say Yerp. I hate Yerp."

I always appreciate Frank Berkeley's thoughtful Amazon reviews of the Liquor books, but his comments on D*U*C*K seem to be as much a political screed as a review and leave me fairly disturbed. While I agree with the screed, the absolute last thing I want as an author is to be treated like a victim. Books are not charity cases; they must stand on their own merits. I think D*U*C*K does that just fine -- in retrospect, I like it better than Soul Kitchen, perhaps because writing it saved my sanity (what there is of it) in a way that no other story ever has -- but I hope readers of it and my other post-K work will state their honest opinions and not "cut [me] some slack" as a Katrina victim. One major quibble with the review: The first chapter was written first, and I believe it serves the purpose of providing Rickey's motivation for the entire remainder of the story. (One pro reviewer even suggested that the rest of the story is a concussion-induced fantasy brought on by the events of the first chapter. While that wasn't my intention, I found it imaginative and intriguing.) The Ducks Unlimited charity auction happened many months later, as an afterthought, an attempt to give a little something back to DU for the importance they'd assumed in the course of the story. In no way except actually plugging in the winner's name was the chapter written to satisfy the requirements of the auction, and the character needed a new name anyway; I'd originally called him "Brownie," as in "You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie," which was amusing but dumb. I don't know why readers bother to speculate about these things, as they are invariably wrong; they'd do far better to say "The chapter felt extraneous to me" and leave it at that.

As well, I'm utterly mystified by the review's final sentence. D*U*C*K is not an "amuse-bouche," or even an appetizer (O Lord, deliver me from the food metaphors). It is a stand-alone novella. With very rare exceptions (e.g. my downloadable early "novel" The H.O.G. Syndrome, which has been available for free on my website for more than a year now), I don't give my work away. This is what I do for a living. No one in any other profession would be expected to give away five months' worth of hard work, and it always amazes me that people think writers should. And as long as I'm bitching, may I just say that I am sick and tired of complaints about the prices of my Subterranean Press books? I'm poor too, but a review is not an appropriate place to complain about how much a publisher charged you for a book, particularly when even major publishers' hardcovers now cost $35 or close to it. Authors have absolutely no control over the pricing of their books, Subterranean allows me to publish in forms (novellas, short story collections) that don't interest major houses, and I think Subterranean always provides a fine value -- a beautifully crafted, signed book -- for the money. No one is forcing you to buy the stuff. If you want poundage for your buck, go buy a Dean Koontz novel.

Besides, if you bought it on Amazon, it didn't cost you $35. It's currently listed there at $23.10.

Over the past couple of years, I have tried hard to complain less about Amazon and the reader "review" system; it's largely fruitless and, I imagine, tiresome for many readers, and Amazon has improved the system, weeding out/removing more obvious troll reviews and allowing comments on the reviews that are posted (a much-criticized decision, but I think the only fair one). When I do allow myself to do so, with very rare exceptions -- and this isn't one -- my comments on Amazon reviews are not intended to insult the reviewers or discourage them from reviewing future books. However, the declaration, "[W]e cut Poppy some slack [because of Katrina]," from an intelligent reviewer in a four-star review, is more insulting than a plain old bad review could hope to be. To "cut me slack" due to the events of the last eighteen months is patronizing and assumes knowledge of me that you do not possess unless you know me personally and well: "Oh, well, look what happened to her; it's a wonder she can write anything at all." The reason I'm not currently writing anything is because I no longer feel capable of doing good work until I've established a permanent home base and gotten my shit together (in several senses of the expression). I was recently rereading Paul Theroux's Hotel Honolulu -- an irritating novel in many respects, but near the end I came across this quote (he's discussing the progession of his writing life from youth to middle age):

All this time I had been writing. Then my life was fractured. I fled and found myself with fragments of my life, and so swiftly had time passed that I had outstripped my ability to write any of it.

I think that is exactly where I am now. Theroux often has the ability to point out what should have been obvious to me in a succinct and clear-eyed way, particularly when it has to do with writing. I was able to write D*U*C*K, and I hope do a good job with it, because it was a fantasy, a kind of fairy tale. The next Liquor book won't be, and midway through, it became clear to me that I wasn't ready to write it yet. Until I am, I may well take on a nonfiction, non-K-related project I've been contemplating for a couple of years but wasn't sure when I would find time for with Rickey and G-man tugging at my sleeve all the time. I miss them badly, but to rush the telling of their story would do a disservice to them, myself, and my readers, and the nonfiction project would be nearly as close to my heart.

I'm not happy with all of my work in retrospect, and I don't know how D*U*C*K (or my other recent work) will hold up for me in ten years, but I will never deliberately palm off substandard work on my readers for the sake of a buck. If I didn't think D*U*C*K was good work, I wouldn't have published it, and I don't expect to be cut any goddamn slack for it. If you don't like the book or any future book of mine, I am sorry, but hold me responsible -- not the one-eyed bitch, the failure of the federal levees, or everfucking Bush. (That goes double if you do like it, natch!)

I had a wonderful time at a party last night and woke up this morning in a state of black despair. I don't want to go into another decline like my beginning-of-Lent one. I mustn't allow it to happen. I have been getting work done and enjoying it, not to mention that I have a May 1 deadline for this book that I'd like to at least make a solid attempt at meeting.

This morning I finished Paul Theroux's newish novel Blinding Light. It is one of the most hateful books I've ever read. I don't necessarily mean that as a criticism -- Theroux is often very funny when he's being hateful -- but I do tend to agree with the critics (the real ones; I've not read any of the Amazon "reviews" yet) that this is not one of his more successful novels. However, I tend to prefer the metanovels that are about him, or at least about a character named "Paul Theroux." I had to take a break from this one about halfway through and read On the Banks of the Bayou, a Little House book previously unknown to me, about Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter Rose who -- what do you know? -- spent a year attending high school in Crowley, Louisiana, where she met Cajuns, black people, and other exotic types. Its innocence was a nice few hours of relief from Theroux's well-written bile.

[Addendum: Having finished Blinding Light and knowing their probable stupidity could no longer worm its way through my enjoyment of the novel, I went ahead and read some of the Amazon "reviews." Aside from its disregard for basic punctuation issues, I almost agreed with this one:

OK Paul, now you've written a dirty book. Please don't do it again. I slogged through it because even when you're bad, you're a good writer, and I've read just about everything you've published. But the weird premise, the unlikely plot, the baroque, excruciating sex scenes, the pretension of name dropping the rich and famous (and the pretension of not name dropping the most famous), the unlikeability of any of the characters--it was pretty awful. The endless scenes with Steadman rattling around in his drug-induced blind horniness got old real fast.

until I got to this part:

There was some good stuff, which others have talked about, so it wasn't a total waste. But at your age, writing so graphically about sex labels you as a dirty old man. You don't want to end up in that category, do you? You can do better than a Henry Miller ripoff.

Yes, by all means, let's declare everyone nonsexual beings once they reach the age of 55 or so. (Theroux is, I believe, 62.) Anyone who thinks about it, writes about it, or has it after that is a dirty old man or woman. Fucking pinhead.]

After a Meet the Candidates forum at Cafe Adelaide last night, suspect_d and I had dinner at Cuvee. It was very good -- Bob Iacovone is currently serving a foie gras Twinkie* -- and they comped us like $45 of food and drinks. I came home pleasantly tipsy and spent the rest of the evening reading wonderful stories Ramsey Campbell and Neil Gaiman had sent me in manuscript, then starting Paul Theroux's new novel Blinding Light. It seems to be, among other things, an erotic novel. His idea of eroticism is emphatically not mine, but he writes so well about it that I don't much care. However, I think it must say something bad about me as a reader that (I don't think these are spoilers, particularly) I would have been more interested in the ongoing adventures of the awful Americans (and one particularly evilly-drawn Londoner) in Part One than in discovering Steadman back home at the beginning of Part Two, swilling datura and dictating his new novel.

Despite slight hangover (though nothing like the apocalyptic one I had after the first time I drank with suspect_d, at Lenny's and the Sazerac Bar -- both gone now, gone), I must go this afternoon to have my new author photos taken. As they used to say in the Ninth Ward (and probably still do), "Ya never know whatcha look like until ya getcha pitcha took."


*Because I know someone will ask: This was a slightly sweet cake baked in a Twinkie mold and piped full of a foie gras mousse/goat cheese filling. My one criticism of Bob's excellent cooking is that I wish he would overcome his fondness for the foie gras/goat cheese pairing. He obviously feels that they enhance each other, a position with which I emphatically do not agree.

I've spent a few years now fielding questions about whether people looking to introduce their friends to my work should start them on the old stuff or the new, and I was never sure what to say; after all, I don't know the friends and I've little objectivity about my own work, so of course I'm going to like the new stuff best. This morning, in response to a question on prime_liquor, I suddenly came up with a response that I think makes some kind of logical sense:

If he likes the new stuff and wants more of it, he'll have lots to look forward to. If he likes the old stuff and wants more of it, he'll be shit out of luck.

Which is certainly not to say that people shouldn't read, or can't enjoy, both sides of what seems to me an artificial and arbitrary divide. However, it's the first reply to this near-unanswerable question I've ever come up with that wasn't utterly subjective.

Last night I finally resumed work on Waiting For Bobby Hebert, then completed an e-mail interview for Wyrd Magazine (a Virginia-area science-fiction/fantasy 'zine), then went to bed and had an erotic dream about Paul Theroux. How many people can say they spent their evening this way? Not many, I'd wager.

Thanks to stardustgirl for the fabulous new Marcel bling icon!

Nothing like waking up to the following message (actually a comment about a friend's journal entry):

"If *I* were doing something that almost everybody in the world regarded as 'wrong'. 'immoral'...all the way down to 'gross', my question would not be, 'what is their problem?' as much as, 'is there actually something wrong with what I'm doing?' And you can tell your mom that I've had both and *definitely* prefer it the heterosexual way."

This from John Corry, the ex-unsavory-character-now-Zombie-for-Jesus I referenced in an earlier entry. As faulty as the logic of the first sentence is, it's the second one that really steams me. I can't speak to John's entire sexual history, but when I knew him, he was a little boy from a small town trying desperately to Be Bad. As far as I could tell, there were very few people in the world he wouldn't either stick it in or let stick it in him. God knows I'm no sexual moralist ... well, maybe sometimes, but not as regards quantity. Still, I can't help feeling that such experiences have about as much to do with homosexuality or heterosexuality as a bulimic gorging on Doritos, ice cream, and great sticky handfuls of Cap'n Crunch washed down with 2-liter bottles of Pepsi has to do with a healthy person enjoying a meal in a fine restaurant.

Of course, there are people who will try to make you feel bad about enjoying the meal in the fine restaurant too. How Can You Spend $100 On Fancy Food When There Are Children Starving,* and all that. There are people who will try to make you feel shitty about anything you do that brings you joy, be it eating or writing or just falling in love (with a person of your own gender or otherwise). Making people feel shitty in the name of God and Jesus, though, is too much for me. I know we're going to see a lot more of it in coming days, but I will avoid it when I can, which is why I regretfully unbookmarked my friend's journal. I am getting to be an old man and my blood pressure can't take the strain. Fucking kid always could yank my chain, but at least now he can't knock on my door at 1:00 AM asking if I want to trip.

*I am not actually unsympathetic to the plight of starving children, but I question how much my $100 can help them when their own countries obviously aren't willing to. I'm not just talking about Africa and such, but if you're at all interested in African "humanitarian" aid, Paul Theroux raises some very interesting questions about it in his new African travelogue DARK STAR.