Friends of starving artists.

Martha:

As you well known at this hour, despite my intents I didn't get near Richland today. I'm still disorganized. By that I mean I don't as yet feel at home. As I wrote last week, no matter where in the world I throw down my cap to rest, my first consideration is simple: can I work in this space?

Without that comfort I feel at odds with where I am. Presently I'm trying to create a kind of work space/office in what would be considered the living room in this house rather than my bedroom because the bed hogs so much space there isn't enough left to actually create a work space/office. And the owner of the house said, "I haven't spent more than a hour in the living room since I've lived here."

But I need another table to put a printer on and some kind of mini-book shelf to put some basics books on such as dictionaries and spelling books etc. Then another small table to put papers, folders, and odds and ends such as paper clips, stapler, ruler, and items you would find in any office. Presently I have my lap top on a desk with some drawers. It's facing the big window which is facing the eastern sky.

I worked most of the morning and early afternoon at the desk. Then I felt the need to read a few of the opening chapters of Wilson's Exile. I had planned to at some point down the road to try and determine if my labors to convert it from first person to third person and simplify the story without losing the depth of it was successful. So I read the first 8 chapters. It's hard to explain how I felt. This was brought about because I requested a man I respect to evaluate it and that made me want to sit down with it once again.

I found one sentence that I failed to convert from 1st to 3rd person. But as I always do whether I am reading my own work or another writer's work, I am trying to absorb into my into recesses of soul to see if I can't find some kind of mystical connection to the central character. Without that no book can ever be a success. Almost as important is the language itself: is it simple yet deep enough to tell me there is a truth within a truth of the story. If a reader read only the first 8 chapters they would be inclined to think this book was a love story. But of course with the title it must be much more than that. If not the book's epigraphs on the title page from Camus and Orwell are misleading.

When we read a true piece of literature we are somehow thrilled even at the hint that the story might not turn out as we hope, that is, it will reveal tragedy without redemption and sorrow without a larger meaning. But as Edith Hamilton wrote in her classic The Greek Way,

We differ in nothing more than in our power to feel. There are souls of little and great degree, and upon that degree the dignity and significance of each life depends. There is no dignity like the dignity of a soul in agony.

What thrills us is knowing "There is no dignity like the dignity of a soul in agony." Walter Scott knew it. Shakespeare knew it (King Lear.) Whitman knew it. Frost knew it. Steinbeck knew it. Ibsen knew it. And of course Hemingway knew it (The Old Man and the Sea.)

So I was measuring the soul of David Wilson as I was reading this afternoon. Just what kind of soul does he have? I felt I knew when in Chapter 6 or 7 he arrives back in Kennewick after having retreated in a storm of agony from a place called Ft. Wayne, Indiana. He understands at last what law he has broken in leaving behind the woman of his life to pursue his ambitions in America. His hands tremble as he opens a letter from her. Everything is written in a simple direct language and we understand his agony and his humbleness as at long last he must face the reality he is no better or worse than his own father who fell apart after meeting and loving a woman at the end of World War II but only after fighting battle after battle against the Nazi war machine in Europe.

So I had to pour myself, as Wilson did after reading the letter, a half shot of whiskey to absorb it all. I am going to attach the first of what I hope are many many American Voices inside Great American Raodside Cafes. The photographs aren't resolved yet. I will find a way to do it, no matter the cost. Without sharp, clear photos the essays cannot have the punch and depth I need. Afterall it was the digital camera itself that gave me this insight on how to create this series.

Human faces, their shapes, their intelligence, their pain, tell us or reveal to us stories within stories. We can travel half way around the world and by chance find a face we think we have known before. Yet on closer look it is a stranger's face full of mystery. So I have to find a way to get the best possible photographs. This story at 740 odd words is just about the limit of what I think a daily newspaper could find useful. It might seem short but that's the reality of journalism.

I'll try to get up to Richland tomorrow.

Roger