"There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are."
Today's suggestion comes from the fine author, Peter Markus: The Red Truck by Rudy Wilson is one of those late-80s Knopf books edited by Gordon Lish
that I found remaindered one day in some TV
appliance-warehouse-turned-bookshop that is now a place that sells
tires. I took it home and immediately could feel the sensation of
something new running through my hands. I think it's a brilliant book,
a one of a kind book,
a book that wouldn't have been made into a book had it not found its
way into Lish's hands. I think the story goes behind it that Lish cut
the manuscript in half (sort of what Lish did to Barry Hannah's
revved-up Ray). I suspect what Lish did was find the core engine of
Rudy's Red Truck and cut away much of what a much younger Wilson
thought was needed to hold the wheels together. For me it's a novel
that is pure hallucination. Each time that I take a ride in The Red
Truck I come unglued and then am put back together in new ways. The Red
Truck is the rarest and realest of deals. You can get it now from
Ravenna Press along with a brand new book of short fiction by Wilson
called Sonja's Blues. And while you're loitering around at the Ravenna
website, do yourself a third favor and nab Norman Lock's The Long
Rowing Unto Morning, an equally dreamy and necessary book. Peter Markus is the author of three short books
of short-short fiction, Good, Brother (AWOL Press/reissued by Calamari
Press), The Moon is a Lighthouse (New Michigan Press), and The
Singing Fish (Calamari Press). He also published the novel, Bob, or Man on Boat (Dzanc Books) and has a short story collection, We Make Mud (Dzanc Books) due in 2011. His work has been published in a number
of anthologies, including New Sudden Fiction (Norton), Fiction
Gallery (Bloomsbury), Sudden
Stories (Mammoth Books), and PP/FF: An Anthology (Starcherone
Books). His stories have appeared widely in such journals as Black
Warrior Review, Chicago Review, Massachusetts Review, Northwest Review,
New Orleans Review, Quarterly West, 3rd Bed, Denver Quarterly, Third Coast,
Willow Springs, Seattle Review, Post Road, New York Tyrant, Sleeping Fish,
Verse, Another Chicago Magazine, Unsaid, and Dislocate, among many
others. He lives in Trenton, Michigan, with his wife and two kids and is
the Senior Writer with the InsideOut Literary Arts Project of Detroit.
In China historians have found out a lot about the early Chinese dynasties from the written documents left behind. From the Shang Dynasty most of this writing has survived on bones or bronze implements. Markings on turtle shells (used as oracle bones) have been carbon-dated to around 1500 BC. Historians have found that the type of media used had an effect on what the writing was documenting and how it was used.