Jake Bellows performing from the back of a Chevy Astro van on a snowy Omaha evening. While not quite a yellow Datsun, this is pretty nice.
(Check out Hear Nebraska for the whole story, and more stellar dispatches from the Love Drunk series: hearnebraska.org/feature/help-by-jake-bellows-love-drunk/)
Amid all the great news lately about my forthcoming book publications, I’ve still been hard at work on my next novel. The novel is something I’ve mentioned a few times here and read some work-in-progress excerpts at Solitude Nacht and Fair Use reading events. This novel is set mostly in 2008. This makes research a little easier than it was for Kings of Broken Things, of course, which is set during World War I, so we’ve taken advantage of this mild Midwestern autumn to head outside and scout some locations that figure in the book. Railroad bridges in Plattsmouth, Nebr., various eateries and locales in Chicago. Fun stuff! It’s been a while since I did a travel post and I like some of these shots. Here you go.
A couple months ago I posted some photos from my February trip to Stuttgart and performance of “Omaha Uninitiated: Stateside Race Riots & Lynching in the Aftermath of World War I.” Now the art, science & business program of Akademie Schloss Solitude has posted some video of the performance on their web site for the ongoing “Quotes & Appropriations” series. Unfortunately the video and music montage portion of Omaha Uninitiated–basically Darren Keen’s part–can’t be put online because of copyright laws. That’s really too bad, as Darren did some great work. However, if everything goes as planned with the novel that’s based on this same material we’ll be reprising Omaha Uninitiated before long in even more venues.
Thanks so much to Jean-Baptiste Joly, Lotte Thieroff, Valeska Neumann, Hagen Betzwieser, and everyone at Akademie Schloss Solitude for making this possible, and more specifically for producing this video. Also, a special thanks to The Durham Photo Archive, Omaha Public Library, and Omaha World-Herald for the use of images presented in the video.
Check it out!
Lately there have been a few questions about the melee at the 1919 Interrace game in Omaha that’s featured both in my chapbook (On the River, Down Where They Found Willy Brown) and in my novel-in-progress (Kings of Broken Things). The scene I wrote is almost entirely fictionalized, as all I had to go on were a few mentions of a fight between black and white players in the game, and a general description of an annual match that took place around Independence Day at a ballfield in Deer Park. (After more research I figured the game must have been played in Rourke Park, a small baseball stadium in South Omaha that’s near Deer Park, the area around where Rosenblatt Stadium stood until a few years ago.) At the time I didn’t plan on writing anything about the game, just chalking it up to personal curiosity, so I didn’t think much more about it until I had to.
Recently, however, I went back through my old research and was able to track down some more solid source information and came across this article from the June 30, 1919 edition of the Daily Bee. (I apologize for the low quality of the image. A transcription is below.)
There are a few similarities between my fictional melee and the real one, including that the melee was struck off by a dirty play and a collision between players. The differences are pretty striking too. My melee is much smaller, as I thought having spectators flooding onto the field to join the fight would be over the top. Yet, at the real event hundreds of people from both races apparently did just that. Truth is stranger than fiction and all that, I guess. My favorite part is that the Chief of Police just happened to be in the crowd with some deputies to step in and arrest the offending “colored firstbaseman” before things got out of hand. Deus ex machina if there ever was one, right?
Pretty fascinating stuff. I’ve been excited to share this.
POLICE ARE CALLED TO QUELL NEAR RIOT AT ROURKE BALL PARK
Police quelled what tended to be a riot yesterday afternoon at Rourke Park when several hundred negroes swarmed onto the field from one side of the grandstand and several hundred whites from the other side after the firstbaseman for the Union Giants, a colored team, struck Jimmie Collins, outfielder for the Armours.
Chief of Police Eberstein, Russell Eberstein, Sergeant Russell and a squad of officers, most of whom were attending the game as spectators, dispersed the crowd and arrest Jack Marshall, the colored firstbaseman.
The trouble started when Collins and Marshall collided at first base. Marshall, claiming that Collins had spiked him, struck Collins in the face while he had the ball in his hand.
I’d like to post a few updates regarding my chapbook On the River, Down Where They Found Willy Brown (order in print or Kindle) as it has been out in the world for about three months now. The response has been great so far. When we first put in the order to have these printed I was pretty sure that I’d end up with a box of chapbooks in my office closet for the next few decades. But, three months in, I’m ordering a second batch from the printers. Combine that with some healthy action early on with Kindle sales and it shows that there’s some public interest in this story, along with my ability to write it, I hope. I’ve been hard at work on some edits to the novel that On the River is excerpted from and am pretty pleased to have this as another bit of evidence as to why a publisher should get behind this project. All in due time, of course. After more than more than a half-decade working on this book and developing these characters and the narrative voice, it’s nice to think that there’s a little light at the end of the tunnel. Or yet more crushing defeat. We’ll see.
Anyway, on to the new developments:
-First off, thanks to everybody who came out to Indigo Bridge Books in Lincoln last night. Presenting with Julie Iromuanya was a lot of fun, and the section she read from her novel Mr. and Mrs. Doctor was really, really good. This looks like yet another fascinating book among the many written by Nigerians and Nigerian-Americans the last few years.
Something my work shares with Julie’s is a playing around with perspective to show characters who are interested, but ultimately limited, in understanding what life is like for those around them. A couple questions came up in the Q&A session after the reading about this interesting strategy, what I see as exploring the limitations of the form we’re engaged in.
A fun night with a great conversation with Julie, moderator Jeff Moscaritolo, and the audience. Thanks so much to Jeff and Indigo Bridge for setting up the event, and to Julie for attracting an attentive, intelligent crowd.
-Check out this review of On the River by Sam Slaughter posted today on Small Press Book Review: “Tensions That Never Change.” My favorite part:
The distance created by the narrator is the most interesting part of this chapbook. At once, you are both part of the mob and hovering above them, taking it all in, watching the chaos that ensues, cringing at their choices and the injustice that takes place. You know that the narrator is one of the German immigrants—the prose is speckled with Deutsch—but you never know who it is. At best, you can guess that it’s one of Miihlstein’s lackeys, though a lackey with prescience unknown to his comrades. There is little emotional involvement on the part of the narrator. Very much as Lewis Nordan does in Wolfwhistle, Wheeler shows the thoughts of the mob in front of you and lets you decide what to make of it.
Willy Brown is over almost as soon as it starts, and that’s a shame. The prose carries you along until the inevitably sad end. Like with any good work of literature, you are left wanting more.
-Nine days remain on the Goodreads Giveaway for a signed-copy of On the River. It’s free to enter, so long as you have a free Goodreads account. So far, 102 people have said they’d be willing to accept a free copy of my chapbook. I don’t know if that’s a good number or not, but it’s more than three, so I’m happy.
-If you haven’t seen the list of bookstores that are now selling On the River, check it out. Particularly the number of shops where I’m not a local author that are taking a chance by stocking my book. In addition to Solid Jackson, Jackson Street Booksellers, and Prevue Salon here in Omaha, and Indigo Bridge Books in Lincoln, I’ve added Lithic Bookstore in Fruita, Colorado, Left Bank Books in Seattle, Argo Bookshop in Montreal, and Shakespeare & Company in Paris.
-And, finally, a few photos of the chapbook in bookstores and other places. If you happen to have a copy of On the River and feel like snapping a photo of it in your neighborhood, I’d love it if you’d send it to me. It’s kind of corny and self-congratulatory, but whatever. I like them. I’m corny. I like congratulating myself for trivial accomplishments.
Hear below–me reading from my new chapbook On the River, Down Where They Found Willy Brown on the Platte River Sampler radio show (KZUM, 89.3 in Lincoln, Nebraska) and being interviewed by host Phil Schupbach. This was a lot of fun and turned out pretty well, I’d say. Thanks so much to Phil and KZUM for having me.
Story:
Interview:
With the centenary of Gavrilo Princip’s assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo coming up this June 28, one would think World War I will be much more in the news soon–at least in the US and Britain. (Here’s how Washington DC plans to celebrate, if you’re interested.)
I’ve been keeping an eye out for possible commemoration events to maybe attend while in Europe this summer, but have mostly come across apathy and an urge to forget among Germans. Something that’s perfectly understandable when I think about it. (Here’s a dispatch from Berlin about why Germans no longer celebrate the history of belligerence the way other countries do; and an article on tensions between Britain and Germany over centenary celebrations. Lots of good reading out there now.) That being said, it looks like there will be a fair amount of events in Europe, particularly in Bosnia, Belgium, and France. Centenary News has the lowdown and is keeping a running itinerary.
Of course, while in-person events and the unveiling of monuments is interesting, what’s coming out on the web now is more compelling, at least to a more historical, less political perspective.
The Atlantic has launched a ten-part photo archive from Alan Taylor called World War I in Photos. It’s awesome. Definitely recommended. The depth of the selections is striking. I particularly like how the images are pulled from the different sides. It seems like most of the stuff I’ve seen before has been very American-centric and jingoistic, although this isn’t always the case, the History Channel aside.
Interesting stuff.
I’ve come across a few cool pages lately that show World War I in living color. The Prague Revue presents WWI in Color, including the impressive combat footage in the video below. From the looks of things, those are French-built trenches in the video. And Time recently posted over a dozen very cool images in Rare Color Photographs from the Trenches of World War I. (Several are graphic, fyi.) So many of these are great, particularly the non-combat images that kind of reveal the style-within-war that seems to be a major part of the era.
One that really caught my eye is featured here on the right, of the Messine Ridge in Flanders. For months British miners tunneled under trenches and No Man’s Land in order to dig mines under German trenches and pack them with explosives. Over 10,000 German soldiers were killed when the TNT was detonated–and you can see what a crater the explosion caused. According the the caption in the article, this was one of the largest “non-nuclear” blasts in history, and could be heard in London and Dublin. So, yeah. This is something that’s mentioned in my novel, so it was of particular interest to me. Amazing stuff.
Some cool stuff. I’m hopeful, that with the centenary of the war coming upon us very soon, a ton more of stuff like this will be coming out. It’s fascinating.
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Theodore Wheeler 