Notes on A Farewell to Arms

Ah, Hemingway. Papa. Big Ernie. The great patron saint of tough-guy sentimentality, godfather to every bitter drunk who put pen to paper. Used to be Hemingway was the great spine holding up all the ribs and meat of 20th century literature. That was when I was a kid, anyway. Today maybe not so much.

But he wrote novels. There's this novel here, with a real story and everything. It's set during World War I, a conflict fading now into distant memory. A Farewell to Arms finds Lt. Henry, a young and adventurous American, working as an ambulance driver on the entrenched fronts of Italy. Despite the shelling he's bored, spending his time in whorehouses or drinking with the Italian officers, mocking the local priests. Then he falls in love with nurse Barkley, the Austrians make a brutal push, and his life goes to heck.

Mind you, this was 1929, about a war that took place in 1918. Back before America became a world power, when Americans had to sneak into foreign armies to find war, back before the great Cold War and our lives of constant conflict. A Farewell to Arms introduced America to what America at war was like. And A Farewell to Arms was about stupid kids trying to become men, and the surprise and heartbreak they felt when the men they turned into was nothing like what they imagined they'd be.

But, yeah, I get it. Tough guys writing about war. Not very PC. Plus, the patriarchy, and dead babies. And the later Hemingway, the drunk bitter asshole. And now here he is on Goodreads, getting his chops busted by every kid forced to read him in junior high. Not that great, they say. Catherine is boring, a shallow bitch who just wants to please Lt. Henry, then dies. Why is this a classic? How has it endured, they wonder?

Well, Hemingway tried to tell you himself, in the most famous passage from this, one of his greatest novels: "The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills." I think that's it, man, that heartbreak right there, how this is the story of one woman who was killed, and one man who was broken and forced to live.

Book Trailer for The MZD

So, I was playing with iMovie the other day. iMovie is Apple's simple movie editor, designed for making souvenir reels of your vacation to wherever. But I was just messing around, stringing together a bunch of clips of things I've filmed in and around Mokpo, South Korea. (You should visit my other site, here, for more information on all that.)

Soon I saw that iMovie has a bunch of other cool features, like sound effects and suspenseful background sounds and such, so I put that on there, too, and then, holy cow, I had a spooky little book trailer. What to do with it?

Lucky for me, I also wrote a spooky book, just in time for Halloween.You may remember The MZD, a shortish novel about a zombie outbreak with supernatural origins. If not, well, here's a trailer that works as an introduction. Those of you who've read it, go take a look anyway. Here it is:

And now that I've got iMovie mastered, I think there are a few more book trailers coming, like for my book Jack's Boys. But that needs a post on its own.

Forty Stories: Publication alert!

I'm happy to announce my story "The Anarchist of Darwin" has been included in Forty Stories, a new eBook anthology from Harper Perennials. This electronic-only anthology also includes work by Ben Greenman and New York Times bestseller Jess Walter. Needless to say, I'm thrilled that my work is included among these talented writers.

"The Anarchist of Darwin" is a story about the world's largest's ball of twine (by one man), and the aftermath of its (fictional) destruction at the hands of an unknown arsonist. It's a crazy ride, one that was fun to write.

Thanks to Calvert Morgan, who edits and publishes the 52 Stories website largely between the demands of his more than full-time work as Editorial Director of Harper Perennials. 

Please download the entire collection in .pdf format from fiftytwostories.com. My story begins on page 17. I'm told it will be available through various e-Tailers, such as Amazon and bn.com, in late July, and my story will eventually be published on the website as well.

Read, enjoy, and share.

The MZD now available. Sample included.

Wow it's been a busy few days.

The MZD: A novella of undead horror, is now available for purchase on Amazon . That's the cover, over there, on the right. I made it myself, and it's an okay cover, though I'm open to fan art for future editions. I had a surprise release party at Moe's bar, in Mokpo, South Korea, and I'm still a bit under the hangover. Thanks for coming, everybody!

So it's out now, ready for you, gentle reader. Please read and enjoy the book. If there are problems, like typos, or names that seem weird, or crazy breaks, please let me know. I proofed it, but these things slip through. I'll save up all the corrections and send everyone who sent them in a corrected edition when I make that happen, or a free copy of my next book, or a beer at Moe's, if you're in town. Plus, if this is well accepted, I promise to pay a copy editor for my next work, which will either be a saga of alternate realities, or a sensitive coming of age tale set in the golden glow of the early sixties, or maybe something with teenage dragon tamers who fall in love with mermaids and fight space commies. Yeee-hah!

Here's a sample of what you're getting in the MZD:

Joe's story:

Joe worked in one of the after-school academies called Hogwans. Koreans sent their kids to Hogwans after school for extra study. Some sent their kids to get ahead of the other kids, the rest sent them only so they could keep up. It was a vicious circle of achievement and keeping-up-withs that no one seemed interested in breaking, and it had earned for Korea one of the largest, richest economies in the world. To hear Joe tell it, he worked for one of the best Hogwans in Mokpo; one where the students were uniformly excellent and the owner was a vicious perfectionist; luckily Joe was one of the best teachers he knew, and the best compensated. Whether it was true or not no one knew - no one had seen Joe teach. What it meant for Joe was he went to work at three in the afternoon, and got out at ten at night, when he went straight to the bar, usually Capp’s, for a few drinks, maybe poker on Wednesdays, before heading home to bed. It was a cycle he was happy to repeat as often as necessary until he’d built up a nice nest egg for whatever came next. 

When he’d showed up at work today, everything had seemed normal. His boss’s car, a black Samsung, was parked squarely in his reserved spot, and kids were milling about on the sidewalk. But his boss wasn’t in the office, nor was he in the classroom. This was strange, because the boss was a workaholic who’d lived in Boston for eight years, which not only left him with a strange accent when he spoke English (How’s da weada? for instance), but an undying love for the Red Sox. He still took five shifts of teaching a day himself, hadn’t missed a day of work in the entire eighteen months Joe had been there. He was a machine for teaching, and a prickly stickler for details: he’d had a running argument with the janitor over where to store cleaning material, and how often the bathroom should be cleaned. Joe had more than once seen them standing toe-to-toe, red-faced and spitting, gesturing wildly at bottles of cleanser stacked on the shelves next to the supply closet tucked under the stairs behind the lobby. 

Lots of foreigners came and went, they couldn’t stand the boss. But Joe was an Army man, and his time there had been vast, and merciless; the Army wanted you attuned to detail, and  unquestioning in your execution. He’d done a tour in Iraq - an even more vast and merciless place than basic training. There in the sun, sitting and waiting for combat that never arrived, the will to serve in the Army was sapped right out of him, and when it came time to get out, he got out. Compared to the Army, Korea and the Principal’s whims were like a kiss on the cheek from your dotty old aunt. Condescending, but a degradation nowhere near real hardship.

But even with the boss gone, the kids were there. So Joe settled in to teach. The kids, mostly cut from the sheep-mold of middle school kids caught in the grind of the Korean achievement machine, showed up and sat down, and Joe ran them through the basics: the rules of how to make the present progressive, a game of pass the ball for amusement, then a few more drills. The second class had two missing students, the next was half full, and for the seven o’clock class he waited ten minutes past the starting time, but no students arrived.

Joe, without a Principal, didn’t quite know what to do. He supposed he should just wait, but after four straight hours, he also had to pee, so with the thinking that his pissing would give the kids a few more minutes to show, he went downstairs to the lavatory. He walked into the bathroom and pulled at a door handle for one of the squat toilets. All of the bathrooms here were squatting toilets, small porcelain troughs set flush with the ceramic tiles. He pulled at the door, but it didn’t open, which was strange, as the latches only worked from the inside, and it seemed dark and empty in there. He didn’t know how it would be locked from the inside and still be empty. Curious, he gave it another pull. He went down to one knee and peered underneath, but it was dark, he could see nothing. Not that he wanted, or needed, the squatter. So whatever. He turned to use the urinal, had a hand on his fly, when he heard a shuffling sound from behind the closed door. A definite rustling sound. The sound of air escaping lungs. Joe stopped, but he didn’t hear it again. Then, the door rattled. It rattled, and he heard a grunt like air escaping, and the door shook again. 

He didn’t ask who it was - he didn’t know the Korean, wouldn’t have understood the response, and the idea of language seemed completely absent anyway; he was suddenly terrified. He looked at the gap below the door and saw the toes of one slippered foot and another in a single stocking, and then he looked up to the top of the door and saw a hand curling over its edge, its fingers stained purple and bleeding from the cuticles and grasping to giving the door a great horrific shake, and then he left.

He ran down the hall to the stairs and around to the main hall where he saw the janitor moving away from him and dragging something that looked very heavy. It looked to be something largish, something trailing liquid, something wearing shoes.

“Hey,” said Joe, but the janitor didn’t turn around. He went into the supply closet, pulling the thing in with him. Surprisingly, it was dark: Joe hadn’t even noticed the sun going down. It was dark and the floor was wet, but Joe needed to let the janitor know someone was trapped in the bathroom. He needed to find out what he could, because Joe, the good teacher, the former Army communications expert, didn’t like loose ends. He was Army: he wanted to pass the buck up the ranks and go home. So he walked down the hall, being careful not to slip on the water. Then he looked into the supply closet and turned on the light. 

***

He didn’t want to say any more, there in Capp’s. “I think now I must be remembering it wrong,” he said. “You know how memories play tricks on you. But no. I’m pretty sure it really was... But I don’t really know what it was. All I known is what I saw. And I didn’t like it.” 

Finally Felix said, “What did it look like, Joe?” 

He paused, a sick smile that wasn’t of amusement on his face, then he said, “It wasn’t even water on the floor. It was red; it was blood everywhere. And it looked like the janitor was eating the Principal.”


________

The MZD: enjoy it today!

The MZD: FAQ continued

Since last I posted, there have been several more questions for me to answer: Here they are.

Q: So, what's The MZD about?

A: Okay, it's about this: Legions of walking undead are roaming the streets of South Jeolla province. All westerners know things change fast in South Korea, but a contagion of murderous horror is a bit too much. Now they’re running for their lives, and looking for help anywhere they can get it. Can the US Army help? Does a rogue filmmaker hold the secret to stop the destruction? Read now to discover the secret horror of... The MZD.

Q: How long did it take you to write?
A: I started in October, during 'desk-warming' time at school. I banged out a page or two a day till I had a hundred pages, then stopped. Then a re-wrote the whole thing a couple times.

Q: Can I get a free copy?
A: Sure. If you promise to do a (hopefully positive) Goodreads or Amazon review, I can send you a copy in kindle, nook, ebook, or .pdf format. Just leave a comment with your email address and I'll get one out to you. *quantities limited.

Q: And, what does The MZD stand for?
A: Well, that's a good question. I knew when I started, but kinda forgot as I went on, and now I just think it's kind of cool. If you think you know, post it in the comments.

Get your copy on Amazon: 

Novel review: Zone One, by Colson Whitehead

As someone just wrapping up his own zombie novella, I felt this one was just begging me to read it. So I did. Here you go:

Colson Whitehead's novel Zone One attempts a difficult move - writing a genre novel with 'literary' intentions. Leaving aside what 'literary' might mean, we're left with the question of whether a) the zombie plot is any good and b) what the book 'reads' like.

The good news is that the central idea of this book is outstanding- a plucky band of paramilitaries attempts to clear Manhattan for re-settlement after a zombie holocaust has brought civilization to a standstill. The central character is a non-special guy who goes by the nom de apocalypse Mark Spitz - a name that's left unexplained for about three-quarters of the book. If you're the type who can't wait three-quarters of a book to find out why the central character is named Mark Spitz, that's the first clue this book isn't for you.

Mark Spitz is, in his own words, a solid B student, who got through life on his special skill of being completely un-special, attracting minimal attention, and being very ordinary. This is his survival skill, in fact, a tongue-in-cheek attempt to explain why when the zombie hordes inevitably converge on whatever hiding space he's in, he will slip away, un-noticed. If that's the type of humor that's for you, then you'll love this book.

As these examples show, Whitehead's execution is a bit off-setting. It may be its off-settingness which leads this to be labeled a 'literary' book. There are endless digressions into family history, a cyclical plot, flashes back and forwards in time, all of which is drenched in dense, artsy prose that is often a bit more than is called for. But, in his defense, this is a novel about zombie apocalypse, a topic where you have to come big or go home.

Whitehead has definitely read Pynchon and David Foster Wallace, and his social commentary runs towards the concept that America, and by extension the after-apocalypse cabal that runs the reconstruction, is under the control of jingo-heavy spin-masters more interested in PR than in actually fixing real problems. Just like modern America, in other words. It's a nearly shopworn conceit done better by others, one that a zombie scenario neither really enhances nor expands upon, though it leads to a final scene that is as zombie-tastic as any zombie climax you can think of.

Don't get me wrong - Zone One is a fun romp, and compulsively page-turnable, though part of the page-turning spree may be due to your glossing over the repetitive digressions and nearly-the-same flashbacks of previous 'safe' houses that continually interrupt the real plot. It's a book that could easily lose a few pounds. Whitehead has a real wit and a strong power of observation not common in contemporary novels, zombie or otherwise. But overall, this is a read for slumming snoots or zombie fan-boys with aspirations of snoot-hood, and the purple prose and endless digressions can make it a slow slog for many readers.

The MZD: a novel of undead horror

So my latest project is a bit of a diversion from my usual navel-gazing, 'literary' (pretentious?) type writing. I've gone genre, mixing my formerly mild obsession with zombies and my current job of teaching English in Korea. This means (can you guess?) I've written a novella of zombie horror, set in South Korea.

It's called The MZD, and it's pretty much done - just a little tweaking, then a conversion to ePub format, then it's ready for you, my adoring reader. So. I can sense the questions mounting. Here, then, is a pre-emptive FAQ:

Q: A zombie book?
A: Yup. zombies.

Q: Aren't there like, hundreds of zombie novels out there already?
A: I'd say there are actually thousands. The market's pretty saturated with them right now.

Q: Is that a problem?
A: We'll see.

Q: Okay, so, I'm a zombie fan, myself. But I'm pretty discriminating. Are they fast zombies or slow? Is it a virus or space dust that turns people into zombies? Is is a post-apocalyptic wasteland of cannibals and madmen? Are there gratuitous kills and bloody mayhem?
A: It's not post-apocalypse, but it's about the outbreak itself, and people in the early stages of dealing with society falling apart. The zombies themselves are pretty traditional, except for the means of re-animation - that's where it's a little different. I won't say any more - part of the fun is reading it and seeing where it diverges from other z-lit out there.

Q: What format will it be released in? How do I get it?
A: It will be an eBook available on Amazon for sure, and probably bn.com, and other outlets like Smashwords. I will also make it available as a simple pdf for people who don't have e-readers as well. Since it's relatively short (about 40,000 words/100 pages), it'll probably cost around 3 bucks.

Q: When can I get my copy?
A: By mid February, 2012.

Q: Any excerpts? A synopsis?
A: Coming soon. Be patient.

Q: What's your next project? Teenage vampires?
A: Sure, why not? But they'll be real vampires, ugly, and disgusting, with zits and bad taste in music.

Q: Are you worried that this work compromises the value of your more literary work?
A: I don't understand the question. Do you want to buy a zombie book or not?

Q: Where else can I follow your progress?
A: The MZD has a facebook page here. Go and enjoy. There are reviews of other zombie works, updates on future projects, etc. Plus, I tweet.

That's all for now. 

Post more questions in the comments below, and I'll get to them when I can.