I’m well into the fifth chapter of Journey, American. My writing style is what the craft types call a pantser. I write the story and let it extend organically, always stopping when I know what will happen next. I leave it to revision to put more meat on the bones, though my writing tends to be spare.
In my short-lived time at CUNY in New York, I was in a writing program. One of our instructors was Jonathan Galassi, publisher of Farrar, Strauss, Giroux. Even though I was nearly 50, I had no idea who Jonathan was. I pretended a lot.
He was attentive and clever and steady with us. We met, somewhat intimidatingly, in a small conference room at FSG just off Union Square. It was filled with his edited books, by writers such as Jonathan Franzen.
I had written a couple of stories prior to leaving for NYC. I decided to write fresh material throughout my time there. Every few weeks we would submit and the small class and Galassi would read it (Nathaniel Rich was the other instructor).
Of one of mine he said, “This is very evocative. But beautiful words do not always convey a depth of meaning.”
I took this hard at the time. It was a terrific criticism. My writing was evocative. I could paint beautiful pictures the reader could see, taste and hear. But not feel.
I have worked on this and still have a long way to go. In my writing, there seems an unwillingness to go all the way to the muddy bottom of feeling, like learning scuba and letting the pressure in your ears scare you back to the service.
This week, I am sharing the opening of my novel. It is not a full chapter, but a chance to show the narration of this book. I want to know what you think. Please share any comments below. I look forward to them.
The first chapter is called Kan-Tin-Nee. This is the pronunciation of Catingny, a French town that was the site of America’s first combat in World War I. It could also be described as the birth of the American military conquest of the 20th Century, though it was small and is now obscure.
Journey Seeger is holding forth in an old Malibu bar called Low ‘n Slow. I chose to allow him to tell his entire story from his favorite seat at this bar. The year is 1967.
Malibu Beach Houses, 1967
Kan-tig-nee
Never give up until you have drawn your last breath.
I heard that when I was younger and troubled in my mind. I have never forgotten it. Now that my last breath is getting closer, I wonder if I will have the courage to believe it.
Am I from around here? Ha, oh yes.
I live down the beach, near Malibu. Yeah, I got there before the surfers and the Hollywood fakes. I was there when poets and painters and old bikers like me could still afford to live on the beach. I will die there, too.
I have the most beautiful lilacs outside my door you could ever see. Smells like heaven when they bloom. Lulu planted them so I would think about her in spring. I do.
I’m a dyed-in-wool regular. I’ve been coming to Low n Slow since Curly opened it. They kept bowls of boiled eggs on the bar back then and you could just eat one whenever you wanted it. Toss on some salt and hot sauce and they made a fine snack. Helped with the drunks, that’s for sure. We’re lucky if we get popcorn on payday now.
We have seventy-five-cent Schlitz longnecks, which is a bargain if you ask me. In fact, I’ll have another right now.
Thanks, Pete.
You know, we could be tromping around in some damn rice paddy right now praying to God we don’t get our nuts blown off and get to live to drink a hot beer and pay good money for it, too. I’ve seen enough of war, and I wish none of those dudes were seeing it now.
Vietnam isn’t the first one and it won’t be the last one. They sent me over to France in the Great War. Yeah, I was seventeen fucking years old and driving an Indian through deep as fuck mud France.
I was in a courier unit. That was the first great thing motorcycles did for me. They kept me out of the fucking trenches. What I saw still makes me cry sometimes.
These boys come out of Vietnam crying, not that I blame ‘em. Boys came home from Korea with everyone wondering where they’d been, and nobody cried for them but themselves. Before that, it was all the World War II heroes fucking everybody and their brother’s girlfriends like the rest of us owed them all the pussy in the world.
I never thought that, but a lot of people did.
Remember, no one saves the world, because money runs the world and money never needs saving. Money is kind of like God, isn’t it? Especially since everybody believes in it. I guess God kind of has a problem with that now.
I saved my own world over there and my world is the only one that’s mattered to me since.
I’m lucky. I’ve always been lucky that way. When I was a boy, my father used to say, “God has a plan for your life, Journey. It’s clear as day that He has a mission for you. It’s up to you to watch for it, though, because it is easy to miss if your heart isn’t open to it.”
Have you ever felt like that? I used to scoff at such as that, you know. Listening out for God…trying to hear His message is a damn chore…there’s so much else to hear.
On occasion, the message has come through clear enough for me to read it like a book, though. Like the Book of Life. I’m not Jewish but I know plenty about the Book of Life. I loved a Jew pretty much my whole life, though she denied to everyone she was a Jew. I used to tell her I was the asterisk in her Book of Life.
I don’t want to be the tiresome bore at the bar.
Are you sure?
From the beginning, I was riding for the Expeditionary Corps over there, in a place called Catigny. I bet you’ve never heard of it. Kan-tig-nee. That’s how you say it. All the big battles that came later are the ones you learn about in school. You know, like Belleau Wood and Passchendaele and all of them big-name battlefields.
They made pretty cemeteries in the end.
"Money is kind of like God, isn’t it?"
Jeff, thanks for sharing the opening of your novel. My test is like this: If I popped into the Low 'n Slow for a refresher, and came across Journey holding forth, would I be intrigued enough to forget what I had planned and stay and listen. I love a good yarn, indeed I do. And Journey certainly intrigues me. My hesitation is that his monolog is like a shotgun blast...pellets of thoughts and values peppering the listener. Each pellet being worthy of focus and elaboration. I'm more intrigued by a single shot fleshed out with conext. I suspect you will get to that as the story unfolds. After being stunned by Journey's shotgun blast I might be compelled to move along with my plans, especially if my plan was surfing on Malibu.
~I will stay tuned. I'm still hooked. KT.