Category: Life

Silverberg, Houston, Texas, and an Interview

On By Robert Freeman WexlerIn Food, Life, The Silverberg Business, WritingLeave a comment
Old sign, from trail behind the building.

New interview up here.

While I was in Houston for my reading at Brazos Bookstore, I went to my old neighborhood. The house I grew up in was demolished and replaced with a big ugly thing sometime in the last ten years. I knew that, so no shock. Fortunately, Three Brothers Bakery is still where it has been since 1960, on the banks of Braes Bayou in Southwest Houston.

Front.

The brothers (Sigmund, Sol, and Max) survived the Holocaust and opened their bakery in 1949, in a different location. At their current building, they have survived multiple floods, fire, covid lockdowns, and losing their Kosher license.

Bathroom wall history.

An article about how they’re doing appeared in the Houston Chronicle a few days before my trip. I only had time for one visit and a coconut custard danish. I had meant to go back the next morning but ran out of time.

Flowers, Spring

On By Robert Freeman WexlerIn Life1 Comment

When the magnolia starts to bloom, snow falls in quantities thick enough to freeze the blossoms and buds.

When the magnolia starts to bloom, if there is no snow, rain falls in quantities heavy enough to crush the blossoms and buds.

This year, the rain came early and the buds laughed.

The magnolia bloomed.

Greene County Library Saves My Ass

On By Robert Freeman WexlerIn Life, Reasearch, WritingLeave a comment

Current library books.

I consume a lot of research material. I like to follow whims. My current novel-in-slow-progress (NISP) is a strange/historical/western/Texan/detective story set in 1888. I’ve needed books about the Texas Gulf Coast, the cities of Victoria (see older post here) and Galveston, TX, Texas Jewish history, the Texas Rangers, ranch/pioneer life, slavery, post-slavery African-American life in Texas, Mexican-American life, period firearms, dance, the Pinkerton Detective Agency, Charles Siringo, a Montgomery Ward catalog, the Gilded Age, gambling, poker, western and detective fiction.

Sorry, I’m out of breath. Rest a bit here and think about blue skies, and….

See a reference in a book of hard-boiled fiction about Leigh Brackett’s Chandler-esque 1944 novel No Good from a Corpse? Library gets it. Decide I want to read Allan Pinkerton’s 1874 book The Expressman and the Detective? Yep, library. Most recently, I requested the University of California Press 4-volume book The Codex Mendoza (which as you can see here, the least expensive hardback on Amazon is $2000 and paperback is $164).

Sometimes I get things for fun, too, like the collected-in-book editions of Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics, music CDs or a movie on DVD.

The library gives me access to everything in the county system, a search-Ohio public libraries system, an Ohio college libraries system, and WorldCat inter-library loan. Sometimes the book I want only exists in a few libraries, but it’s rare that there is something I can’t get.

Books, reference items, yes all that, but also, for me, a place to write. Because of my work schedule and home life, about the only time I have for writing during the week is my lunch break. I can spend anywhere from ten minutes to half and hour at the nearest library branch (usually Fairborn, because I work in Fairborn but sometimes I get crazy and go to the Yellow Springs branch), then back to work to eat something. It isn’t nearly enough time, but it’s what I have and I manage to make progress on whatever I’m working on.

The point—was there a point?—the Greene County Library saves my ass. Whatever I think I might need to see, they get for me. Right now, there’s a levy up for renewal. The state, as usual, is planning to cut library funding, again. Because, you know, if people read, they might vote, and if they vote, they might vote for someone else. Or, they might vote for the levy.

If the levy doesn’t pass, the library will have to reduce services. That will hurt me and everyone who uses it. And when it passes, the library will work with the state to prevent further loss of funding. So that maybe someday they don’t have to renew the levy. The whole point is: We need a stable library system here (and everywhere).

Please go here to find out more: http://stronglibraries.com/

Another Goodbye Post

On By Robert Freeman WexlerIn LifeLeave a comment

Lucius Shepard bestowing gift to Bob Kruger at last Clarion West '97 party.
Lucius Shepard bestowing gift to Bob Kruger at last Clarion West ’97 party.

Two people who meant a lot to my creative development have died in March, the same month in which I was born. Jack Hardy, March 11, 2011, and now Lucius Shepard, March 18, 2014. I know that the dates are meaningless, but I can’t help attributing meaning to the coincidence.

I’ve written about Jack here and here. Jack and Lucius both taught me some things about being a writer, being a creative person in the world. They were both large figures (Lucius physically, Jack not). They were people who didn’t like crap being revered as art and didn’t mind talking about it. They could alienate people. They both alienated me on occasion. But that doesn’t make me miss them less. They also would have been amused at some of the eulogies offered up, some by people they had no use for. And perhaps embarrassed by tributes from people they cared about, like Michael Swanwick’s beautiful post about Lucius here, or David Massengill on Jack.

Jack and Lucius never met and likely never knew of each other’s existence. I could have, but never did, give either of them something to read or listen to. I didn’t know if they would like it. Lucius wasn’t much interested in folk music, though I think he would have appreciated Jack’s art of language. Jack probably read Lucius’s introduction to my novella, In Springdale Town, but I can’t remember if we ever talked about Lucius and his fiction. I invited both to my wedding. Jack came, and sang his incantatory “The Wedding Song” from his album The Hunter. I don’t think Lucius ever acknowledged receiving the invitation, which was okay; I hadn’t expected him to come, and I didn’t think the town would have been large enough to hold both of them. Also, Yellow Springs wasn’t a place Lucius wanted to visit; his ex-wife went to college here.

Lucius taught my third week at Clarion West in 1997. Clarion is a six-week workshop mostly for fantasy and science fiction writers. I imagine it’s not an easy job. There are egos involved, and exhaustion, and a lot of writing. Some teachers are more aloof, some take on a role of parent or guardian, some bring the bourbon. But Lucius didn’t just drink with us. He offered critiques, he pushed, he advised. For my story “Suspension,” which I wrote the first week and he read later, during his week, he recommended changing it from third to first person, a change that led the revisions along unexpected paths and to eventual publication. His introduction to In Springdale Town was a mini-essay about the problems of teaching an intense group of individuals and the perils of attempting to predict success. Some reviewers had problems with the introduction, not understanding (or not caring) that it was a glimpse inside him. Reading it always makes me feel better.

Lucius experienced a multitude of health issues over the last few years, but always appeared ready to fight back and return to health and productivity. This time, he didn’t.

I’m tired of writing about people who died.

Short Post About Being Away And Coming Home

On By Robert Freeman WexlerIn Life, Music, Readings, Writing3 Comments

wexler-littleitalyBeing true to the spirit of this blog, I should just say, I’m back, with, at most, a photographic accompaniment, and let the reader infer that I must have been somewhere. Instead, I’ll amble along for a few more words, perhaps even an entire paragraph. (And, are there partial paragraphs, isn’t any group of words followed by a line break considered to be a paragraph? But I digress.)

I went to New York and read a section of my roughly-completed short novel, The Silverberg Business, at the New York Review of Science Fiction reading series on March 11, and the next night I appeared on WBAI’s Hour of the Wolf radio program, with host and elocutionist Jim Freund. That bit of fun was in the 1–3am time-slot (not my favorite time to be awake). I read a classic Wexlerian story, “Tales of the Golden Legend,” available on my website here.

The NYRSF event was with Chandler Klang Smith, author of Goldenland Past Dark, which I’m looking forward to reading. She read from a cool-sounding novel-in-progress. It was a fun time, attended by a good-sized group that included old friends and a lot of strangers.

My reading was on the third anniversary of Jack Hardy’s death, so on the show the next night Jim played a couple of his songs and “Jack of Hearts,” a tribute song by Tim Robinson. The Hour of the Wolf show is archived and stream-able for two weeks from the date of the show (March 13).

Aside from reading, I ate. That shouldn’t be surprising. Ate brilliantly-spicy stuff at a newish place called Hot Kitchen, and also Xi’an Famous Food, and others.

I walked a lot. I bought bagels to take home. I saw friends. I didn’t see one friend because I went to the wrong place and didn’t have his phone number, didn’t even know if he had a phone (I blame that on being exhausted by staying up late for the radio show.).

I also found out after it happened, that my friend Mike Laureanno came in from Providence to perform at the same time as my reading. There’s a video of it here.

And came home.

(note: I selected writing as one of the tags for this post because whenever I use that tag I get multiple likes by people who appear magically and probably don’t read the post or have any idea who I am.)

Stepan Chapman

On By Robert Freeman WexlerIn Art, Books, Life, WritingLeave a comment

Stepan Chapman died. I knew him only briefly and not very well. His novel, The Troika, was an amazing piece of wacky and thoughtful weirdness. I hadn’t seen him in several years. He had a starring role in the The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases, a book put together by Jeff VanderMeer & Mark Roberts. Writers were asked to create a story built around a fake disease. I wrote a letter (as Dr. Wexler) to the fictional Dr. Lambshead begging him not to publish the Pocket Guide. Stepan incorporated my letter into the history of the Pocket Guide, treating Dr. Wexler as the villain, always stealing Dr. Lambshead’s research, etc. We did some readings together (I couldn’t see him, but was told that when I read my Dr. Wexler letter, he would make silly faces to the audience to mock me).

I’m at work, listening to “Sensorium” an episode from Flotsam Beach, a series of podcasts that Stepan did. I’ve only just discovered them. In which he reads from Guy Murchie’s The Seven Mysteries of Life, interwoven with a variety of sounds.

“In this sequel to Leeuwenhoek’s Lenses, Stepan reads more pages from Guy Murchie’s The Seven Mysteries of Life, in order to explore the sensory apparatus of the animal world.

Background choir of aquatic insect larvae provided by David Dunn. Zoological interlude music provided by Marc Hollander of France, Lars Hollmer of Sweden, Kimpereli of Switzerland, and Fred Frith of Britain.

Protoplasm. Did we discover it? Or did it discover us?

After a year of imaginary broadcasting, Flotsam Beach is still asking The Big Questions.”

The combination of his reading style and material, plus background music works to make listening to the program oddly stimulating and soothing. Plus, it’s nice to hear his voice.