As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
The other day in the thrift store I spotted something and splurged 80 cents on a massive volume by Patrick F. McManus. I doubt if any of you have ever heard of him or read is material, no more than Russel Annabel or Peter Hathaway Capstick, but for 20 years these writers were the most accomplished at their craft, and as a child with natural ability, I had no idea I would be a writer one day and realize that their styles would influence what appears here.
Mr. McManus was a humorist in the outdoor field and touched on the bitter humor that rural and urban people all exprienced in poverty and sorrow. Jonathan Winters was such a child and turned to humor to make the world laugh.
I grew up with people of sorrow. They were chronic bullshitters and it rubbed off on me about hip deep. It was not enough to tell a story, but to exaggerate an event with an irony to make you forget all the fleshed skinned off your soul by satan.
Mr. McManus was the best at humor. Russel Annabel could lead you on the trail of the mystery of life and death. Peter Capstick would wrap you in a comforter of prose, so you never wanted to leave.
It was a revelation to discover that after all of my schooling in which I hated reading, that the few dollars I had were spent to a comfort which was not alcohol or drugs, but outdoor articles in old magazines which featured McManus, Annabel and Capstick.
They were the equals to another American novelist in Robert Heinlein in the craft of not writing to write, but in making the effort to entertain a guest who knocked on the door of their words.
That is what a writer is. There is a vast difference in Mockingbird manipulations which all of us are experienced with, the university editor edition of "how you are supposed to write", and the person who takes a Spiritual knife, cuts the Spirit in them, and flows the blood of the prose in words which are Biblical, for it is heart and soul which the reader touches. It is the holding of emotion by the reader, the comfort and care of the writer which creates that bond in a private conversation, which is like a prayer with God, in your knowing that there is only you and the author in this world and forever in time sharing an intimacy which only the written word can embrace.
I have no time now in the volume of work which appears here to touch the gossymer keys of the electric light show in the prose which normally flows from the Spirit in me. If I tally correctly in my estimation, there have been 44,000 pages acccording to my word program, more than St. Paul and the Bible and moving past encyclopedia status.
The above writers had time and paychecks in order to write at liesure, which all the propagandists have now. I turn out 35 columns a week, and most turn out 1, and numbers turn out 1 column a month. I could not imagine only producing 12 stories a year as Patrick McManus did for almost 25 years, as it would seem like I was not working at all.
Unfortunately for Mr. McManus, Annabel and Capstick, they never had fans at Homeland Security paying them visits for what they composed.
It is amusing this writing field, as everyone always can do it better, and yet no one reads their stuff. Editors always have been taught that you do not know what you are doing, so they appear in print and every person murdering trees to all sound the same.
Never did make sense to me why everyone had to sound the same, and when I started getting beat up by the diploma purchasers, I simply started doing more of what infuriated them, and pretty soon the way of communicating which makes no sense to university minds, is changing the rest of the world in communication.
There is an entire transformation of the English language due to tweets and blogs. It can not be taught and you have to be a natural at it, like being full of bullshit around the feed sake, coffee table or camp fire.
Shakespeare was not taught. He was a product of the bards of the Anglo Saxons in their epic tales back to the prose of Isaiah and David. Greatness is inspired and Inspiration only comes from the Spirit of God.
I was thinking of Pat's book as I close this. It was all wrinkled in being wet. I reckon that at 80 cents this book being wet was either dropped in the toilet for a bathroom book, was along on an outdoor trip and got dropped in the lake or it involved a prized hunting dog mistaking Pat's book for a bush, as both are products of the forest and I can see why the mistake would take place.
I should probably be wearing skinning gloves I suppose in reading it, even if on the back inside cover there appears to be something growing in that former wetness, attesting to it's healthful qualities..........then again I heard that Round Up herbicide had algae growing it, so maybe plants are not the greatest judge of the healthful side effects of reading or writing.
A dog is what a man gets...........
Before he can find a woman desperate enough to date him.
After he finds a woman desperate enough to marry him.
And a dog is what a man gets, after the wife and kids get his life, his bank account and the cat.
.......and in the end a dog keeps getting a man informed he is the man's best friend.
- Lame Cherry
agtG
