A/V Club: The Red Baron and the Flying Circus

| Ted Wheeler

Below is the final scene from the Roger Corman film Von Richthofen and Brown (1971) about German ace Manfred von Richthofen (aka The Red Baron) and the Canadian pilot Roy Brown who eventually shot down and killed him. The movie is pretty interesting, by the way. Although not precisely accurate in historical detail, the numerous air combat scenes and sense of camaraderie and competition between enemy squadrons are done quite well, as evidenced by these final shots.

 

 

And here’s some archive footage of Richthofen’s remains after the crash, and his funeral. There was such respect between the rivals that the Red Baron was given a full military funeral by Allied forces. His infamous red triplane, however, was quickly dismantled for souvenirs.

 

 

World War I Exhibit to Come to Omaha

| Ted Wheeler

A traveling exhibit from the National World War I Museum in Kansas City will make its way to Omaha this Wednesday, August 17, 2011, and to Lincoln on Friday. It sounds like it might be kind of cool for anyone who is interested in the era.

From the Omaha World-Herald:

Experience the sights and sounds of World War I on Wednesday at the General Crook House Museum at Fort Omaha, 5730 N. 30th St. A special travelling [sic] exhibit will be there from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. to illustrate the conditions of trench warfare and the tools, weapons, equipment and uniforms of the war.

We visited the museum in KC last fall–and here’s what I had to say about it then. There are some engrossing exhibits and artifacts there, and it looks like this small exhibit gives a taste of that.

More information can be found at the Honoring Our History Tour website, for those interested. Admission is free.

Tel Aviv Housing Demonstration

| Ted Wheeler

 

We were at this protest on Rothschild at night a few weeks ago, and I saw last night on PBS that it’s still going on. It’s pretty wild. A tent village, bazaar, protest, sit in, carnival, rally, debate, exposition right in the middle of the city.

There’s some good stuff in the video on the ways a government separates its people with politics and divisive action.

July in Review (2011)

| Ted Wheeler

July was kind of a cluster, what with spending a week in Tel Aviv, and needing the week before takeoff getting ready for the trip. There wasn’t a whole lot of time to write, but I did manage to add another thirty pages or so to the final part to The Hyphenates of Jackson County, my novel. It wasn’t a ton of work to get done. But seeing how I spent most of May and June working on short stories, it was nice to get some momentum going on the novel again, and I think I did that. The ten hour flight from New York to Tel Aviv provided a big block of time to work, especially since I couldn’t sleep on the flight over. I also had three days of writing and revising in Israel, two days in a park and one at the beach. (Supposedly Jonathan Safran Foer moved to Tel Aviv to finish work on his latest book, so I’m in good company there. My hopes of becoming a superstar Jewish author are pretty slim, however. You know, because of this, among other reasons.) The change of scenery on the Mediterranean helped quite a bit, as a change often does. It’s almost always easier to think about home (or familiar things) when you’re far from home (surrounded by unfamiliar things). Being jarred out of my routine helped to get some gridlocked scenes moving again. I’ve kept writing outside this week too back in Omaha, working on the porch with a cold beer this afternoon. Not too shabby.

In other news:

-The big news of the month, in the small world of my writing, was that “On a Train from the Place Called Valentine” was selected for publication in Boulevard. The story will be featured in the noted journal in March 2012.

-Earlier in the month, my review of Suzanne Rivecca’s debut collection (Death is Not an Option) appeared on The Millions.

–Nouvella Books unveiled their web site late in July. A spin off from Flatmancrooked’s Launch program, Nouvella is keeping the good fight going in helping to kick start the careers of some deserving writers. Best of luck to them!

-I received a small blurb in The Kenyon Review monthly newsletter about my prize-winning story “The Current State of the Universe” appearing in The Cincinnati Review in May. I think it’s very cool of TKR to do that kind of stuff. It’s a small bit, but very much appreciated.

-There was a great article about Daniel Orozco and his debut fiction collection in the recent Poets & Writers (print only) about dealing with agents and editors before you’re ready. Some very instructive stuff. Orozco’s first published story appeared in Best American Short Stories 1995 to quite a lot of fanfare. “Right after that I was getting calls from agents and publishers asking to see my other stories, to see my novel,” Orozco tells us. “But there wasn’t anything else. I was frantic for about a year–they all wanted something now. After a while they stopped calling and things quieted down, and I just settled back into my routine.” A mere sixteen years later, the collection has been published–and, again, Orozco is an author on the rise. It’s heartening to hear stories like this after my own experience in finding and losing an agent. The promise burns so bright when you’re in that situation—flying out to NYC to read, having agents contact you, hearing the sirens’ call of major publication and large advances—that when life slows back down, when that promise isn’t fulfilled, it feels like you’re washed up at twenty-eight. It’s rare enough to even get one real chance in this business. But as Orozco’s trajectory demonstrates, there are second chances too. If the writing is good enough, and if you’re persistent about putting yourself on the line, there’s opportunity yet.

Dispatch from The Hyphenates of Jackson County

“It’s something I wondered a lot about over the years since it happened. What would have gone through his mind? What would he have been thinking of, or could he even think at all, when the cops finally handed him over to that mob? Could he still see or hear, was his tongue a useless mass, did his skin still feel, once that first bullet ripped through him? It’s something I wondered about a lot. I wondered about that boy, Willy, and how it happened to him, and how, once it was all over, the war, the election, my time in Lincoln, I knew it wasn’t going to happen to me. But for a time that could have been me who had that happen to him. Not exactly the same, but something like that. So I wondered how it felt to be picked up by a lynch mob. Would his eyes and ears work, or would he be too afraid? Would he have been able to hear what that mob promised to do to him?”

Personal Rejection Notes, Requests for More, and Other Nice Versions of No Thanks

Conjunctions for “Shame Cycle.”

Just Finished

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. I never really fell in love with this one. I can see why people really like it, but it didn’t happen for me. For one thing, several of the stories were eerily close to some episodes from Season Two of Californication. The book seemed too trendy—in its formal choices and content—almost intolerably so. A good book, but one that gnawed at me.

The Call by Yannick Murphy. This is a very good novel. I’ll be reviewing this soon, so I won’t say much here now.

Now Reading

A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter.

Up Next

Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson.

Tel Aviv! WTF?

| Ted Wheeler

-So Nicole and I were in Tel Aviv all last week. It was a last minute trip and kind of crazy coming together. We only had four days to plan activities before leaving (Nicole was working all day too) so I didn’t go to Jerusalem or any big, “life-altering” tourism sites. I did write in a park a couple days, get to the beach for an afternoon, and walk around the city for 3-6 hours per day. My destroyed feet aside, it was a pretty awesome trip. There aren’t many photos to share–as I didn’t take many pictures of myself walking alone–but the gallery above exhibits some highlights.

-We did see a huge housing protest along Sderot Rothschild one night. It was pretty interesting. There were bands playing, people arguing, people there gawking with their kids, street performers, etc, etc. It’s the Israeli version of The Rent is Too Damn High campaign, I guess.

-We did not visit the Gaza Strip or West Bank, which pretty much doomed any hope that I could write a secret agent thriller based upon our travels. There wasn’t much thrilling about buying fresh juice on the street or shopping for sunglasses at a mall pharmacy. We didn’t even ride public buses, because, you know, safety first.

-For our first overseas trip, I think we handled ourselves pretty well. The twenty-four hours of travel each way was rough, but we dealt with it. The language barrier wasn’t such a big deal. Even though our hotel was in a district that wasn’t super tourist-friendly, it was easy enough to get along. Luckily all the street signs are printed in Hebrew, Arabic, and “Roman Alphabet,” so at least you knew what street you were on.

-Tel Aviv is awesome. You can drink limonana all day long. We did.

What a Great Time to be Literate – Fall/Winter Book Preview

| Ted Wheeler

A couple weeks ago The Millions released their “Most Anticipated” book preview for the second half of 2011, and there are some really great books on the list. Some of these forthcoming releases are pretty exciting. You should check out their article for the full thrust of the season, but, nonetheless, here are the ones that have me on tenterhooks.

Don DeLillo will publish his first collection of short stories in November with The Angel Esmerelda: Nine Stories. The stories included were written between 1979 and 2011, so it’s a pretty big range to draw from–and is clearly a collected stories kind of thing with a different label. It is a new book from DeLillo, however, so I’m eager to read it.

Dan Chaon, probably my favorite contemporary writer of short fiction, comes out with a new collection early in 2012 called Stay Awake. I liked his novels okay, but, for me, Chaon’s short story collections are where it’s at.

Colson Whitehead wrote a post-9/11 zombie novel–Zone One–that comes out in September. It looks pretty interesting. Whitehead’s The Intuitionist is one of my favorite novels, and one I highly recommend checking out if you haven’t yet read it.

Denis Johnson‘s Train Dreams comes out in August. It’s a novella that was originally featured in the 2003 O. Henry Prize Stories anthology.

Roberto Bolano has yet another posthumous release with The Third Reich. The title refers to a war game some Germans get caught up in while vacationing in Spain.

Lauren Groff comes out with Arcadia in 2012, a novel about a utopian sect in rural New York that falls apart.

Yannick Murphy‘s The Call. I’ll be reading this over the weekend. A novel written as diary entries about a family’s difficult year after a son goes into a coma following a hunting accident.

DBC Pierre‘s Lights Out in Wonderland is also an August release. An international, satiric romp that takes its aim on the largesse and iniquities of late capitalism.

Also, Dave Madden‘s The Authentic Animal is out soon–a nonfiction book about the world of taxidermy–and you can win a copy via HTML Giant’s current caption contest.

“On a Train from the Place Called Valentine” to Appear in Boulevard

| Ted Wheeler

Some excellent news today, as I learned that my short story “On a Train from the Place Called Valentine” will run in the Spring 2012 issue of Boulevard!

This will be my sixteenth published short story, and the third of mine to appear in Boulevard. My work has found a home in the journal, and I’m grateful for the support of its staff, especially editor Richard Burgin. It’s a real privilege to connect with a prestigious journal multiple times like this. Previously, “Welcome Home” ran in the Spring 2008 issue of Boulevard–as winner of their Short Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers–and “The Approximate End of the World” ran in the Spring 2010 issue.

Similar to when I mentioned that “The First Night of My Down-and-Out Sex Life” was selected by Confrontation earlier this year, “On a Train from the Place Called Valentine” is part of a series of short stories that I’ve been working on the past couple years–which combine in my short story collection (How to Die Young in Nebraska) as the novella “Bad Faith.” The other stories include “The Man Who Never Was,” which was in Weekday a year ago, and “Kleinhardt’s Women,” which was on Fogged Clarity in December. “On a Train from the Place Called Valentine” is a psychological thriller that follows heroine Amy Gutschow after she jumps a freight train outside Aurora, Nebraska and through her confrontation with a pathetic but effective ladies man, Aaron Kleinhardt, after she hops off the train in Valentine, Neb. This story is one I’m very proud of, and I’m ecstatic to know that it will be taken care of by a stalwart like Boulevard. Cheers!

The Kenyon Review Online resources (and others)

| Ted Wheeler

I’ve been enjoying the Kenyon Review blog this summer–specifically their series of Micro-Interviews and the audio archives from their 2011 Writers Workshop program. It’s pretty cool to watch how these things take shape. The most famous archive of writer interviews is, of course, the Paris Review‘s, which is like a master’s program in literature and writing by itself.

It’s interesting how the rise of MFA writing programs in the last decade happened at the same time that so many new resources (or not so new, just newly electronic) for writers have popped up online. Of course, it isn’t like a writer has ever had to go to grad school in order to meet other writers, or read great books, or write every day, or find great advice and resources, etc. Grad school programs provide an organization of these activities, for a price; and in a somewhat similar way, great literary blogs and archives provide a similarly useful naming and sorting of resources for those who join their community.

Anyway–here are some links of things I’ve enjoyed these past few months:

–Kenyon Review Blog

–TKR Micro Interview with Ron Carlson

–Audio of readings and seminars from the 2011 Kenyon Review Writers Workshop

–TKR Micro Interview with Seth Fried

–The Paris Review Interviews

–The Paris Review Daily– their blog

–HTML Giant – the new official home to heated literary debate and hipster declarations

–The Outlet – the blog of Electric Literature and NYC literary social scene

–Key West Literary Seminar Audio Archives