Monday, June 08, 2009
Off on a novel pursuit
Steve Huff
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From the RoundTable blog
Over the past few years, I've crossed a few items off life's to-do list: travel with family, coach son in sports, attend the Masters, write a newspaper column. I'm proud of those, but there's a big item near the top that keeps demanding my attention: Write the Great American Novel.
"Oh, the G.A.N., eh?" replied my Aunt Georgette, an award-winning commentary writer in Ohio. "I thought I had one in me, too," she added, "but I don't." She finds reality more compelling than fiction, and certainly brings those perceptions to life in her columns.
Another relative, my father, confided a few years before he died that he'd once written a novel but never submitted it.
"Let me read it!" I demanded.
"I burned it," he said.
End of story, literally.
Lately, though, I keep meeting people who have written books, thereby stoking that great American fire.
You know Martin Clark. His novels have been featured on billboards around Roanoke for several years. He is a circuit court judge in Stuart whom I see at the gym and around town. He has a quick smile, loads of energy and always a good story on the tip of his tongue.
It's not surprising that he's written three novels. His most recent is "The Legal Limit," for which I waited an hour to get a signed copy and which I devoured in a few sittings. It is a page-turning legal thriller, loaded with local color. Clark was dubbed by The New York Times as "the drinking man's Grisham."
Wow, I thought. That is cool. What might the critics call me one day? The heathen man's C.S. Lewis? The stoic's Gary Larson? Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. That's OK. A writer tells his story first, and the monikers follow.
Which brings me to my next literary encounter, Jeff Wagner. He's a tall, amiable, engaging fellow. He works out of his home, which doubles as an animal rescue shelter. He likes beer, but the kind that sells for $10 a bottle and that you sip from a goblet. Lately he's become obsessed with tennis.
Oh yeah, and he's a serious metal head. He's virtually lived the history of heavy metal music. His vinyl record collection numbers in the thousands. He's written for a leading heavy metal magazine and is on a first-name basis with some of his favorite artists. He specializes in progressive metal, meaning metal that advances the genre in new directions.
Jeff's book, "Mean Deviation -- Four Decades of Progressive Heavy Metal," will be published by Bazillion Points in the fall. And you thought Patrick County was famous for bluegrass: We've got the thinking man's metal head.
From heavy metal we turn to gentle poetry. Stephen Alan Saft, a patient of mine, will take us there. As his blog explains, he has endured two rounds of lymphoma and its treatments to produce two lovely books of poetry: "City Above the Sea and Other Poems" and "Murdoch McLoon and His Windmill Boat." His work is shallow and deep; common and esoteric; timeless and timely. He's the modern man's Frost.
Check out excerpts from his books and other writings at sasaftwrites.com. While you're at it, go to Amazon.com and buy his books. Poets are tragically underappreciated.
And columnists? I'll put it this way: You don't write opinion pieces to make friends, build confidence or get rich. The reward comes from briefly appeasing that incessant, nagging voice in your head that somethin' ain't right. Each column demands hours of research, rumination, writing and responding.
It's worth it. I wouldn't give it up for anything. Anything, that is, other than -- the Great American Novel. There you have it. I'm giving up this column to write a book.
To my critics, the switch should come as no surprise: You've suspected me of writing fiction all along. Thank you for holding my feet to the fire. I'll try not to get too far out of hand.
For my supporters, I hate more than anything to turn off the dialogue. Living in a hotbed of conservatism makes it hard to remember that there are others out there like me. Thank you for your thoughts and stories. They mean more than you can imagine.
"The winking man's Melville?" Who knows. Google me in a couple years. In the meantime, keep reading, and above all, keep thinking.
Huff lives in Patrick County and practices family medicine. He has been a columnist for The Roanoke Times for more than two years.
