Downtown Double

Downtown Double
Originally uploaded by franksutter.

When I'm at work (in downtown San Francisco) I sometimes walk around during my lunch break and shoot random photos. This image gives me some weird, intangible satisfaction. Somebody commented that reflected images have a surreal quality. I find that the black, dark space in the middle of this image is even more mysterious to me. And I like the lady's patterned skirt.

Pop-Eye

Pop-Eye
Originally uploaded by franksutter.

This picture kind of speaks for itself. Sooner or later Pop-Eye the long-haired mini-dachsund needed his photo posted here. He is the man, quick with a tennis ball, ever eager to follow me anywhere (unlike a lot of people).

William T. Vollmann

Tonight I was walking by Diesel Books in Oakland, peered in the window, and recognized the writer William T. Vollmann standing at the back of the store giving a reading to a good-sized crowd. Of course I went inside, handed my bag to the girl behind the counter, and eventually found a seat. Vollmann's epic book "Rising Up and Rising Down" about the history of violence is now out in paperback, so he was there to help promote it. McSweeney's published the hardback version, and I actually worked on that in a small capacity by helping to research images for various chapters as requested by Vollmann himself. He had written lists of desired images for each chapter. I was given several of his chapters along with the lists and sent over to the UC-Berkeley library to find appropriate images, things like, "Death of Julius Caesar" or "Hitler, Portrait."

In Diesel, Vollmann read a story about two warring villages in Serbia/Kosovo. His prose was very unflowery, just straight dialogue with very little description. He read flatly, without emotion, but his voice is strong enough and clear, so it was easy to follow along. He seems very sincere--after all, it's often been his own neck in the line of fire in various war-torn parts of the world. He is a singular creation, someone who puts himself where most of us don't dare go, even the gutsiest of us, I would say. After reading, he said, "I can take some questions now, or just sit down and sign books. Feel free to buy a book, or don't. It doesn't matter either way." That's close to what he said anyway. After a series of questions, while he was signing books, one woman asked him for his email address so she could send him her critique of his book after she's read it (some people are crazy). Vollmann said, without irony or attitude, "You can send it to my P.O. Box. I'm not on the Internet."

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The Store with Beautiful Things

The Store with Beautiful Things
Originally uploaded by franksutter.

I realized today that my entries so far have not been very inventive or all that original. And I also doubt anybody is reading this so I can probably just write, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy..." several thousand times and it would be all the same to my non-reading public. Forgive my pessimism, but I've been reading Dostoevsky's "Notes From The Underground" and maybe it's getting to me. Anyway, this image is on the side of a store in Chinatown (as if you couldn't tell). My bus goes by it every morning on my way to work (except that I recently moved so now it doesn't). I want to write a book of strange, brilliant poems, and I want to title the book, "The Store With Beautiful Things."

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Heartbreak (Election Results)

All I can think of is the title to that Saul Bellow novel, "More Die of Heartbreak." Here's a quote from a story in the New York Times about the way foreign governments were viewing the election that may sum things up (headline of the article was, strangely enough, "World Heads React Cautiously to U.S. Vote"):

Observers credited Bush's success to Americans' fears of more terrorist attacks and signs the economy may be improving -- but noted it was a very close race.

"It is an incumbent president in a situation where a great part of the nation experiences that it is in a war with terrorism and the economy is moving in the right direction," said Sweden's Prime Minister Goeran Persson. "These two issues together should have given Bush a clear victory. Despite this, it was very narrow. This shows that the U.S. is divided."

http://nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-ELN-World-View.html

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Beat Bush

Beat Bush
Originally uploaded by franksutter.

The most important thing going on today is getting out and VOTING. I know a lot of people from outside the U.S. who adamantly WISH they could vote in this election. If you are eligible to vote, you must know by now that it is important to exercise your privilege. In Australia, citizens are required to vote. Here in California we are being told Kerry has it all locked up, so it might be easy to get cynical and think my vote doesn't count, but after this election is over, I want to be able to say proudly, "I voted for John Kerry." Plus, there are a lot of smaller, but also very important issues and races on the ballot. They tend to get lost in the presidential tidal wave.

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John Kerry and I

John Kerry and I
Originally uploaded by franksutter.

I ran into Senator John Kerry down at the campaign headquarters recently, and he was kind enough to pose for this snapshot with me. We also played paper football in the office there. I flicked a number of field goals right over his head. If John Kerry had chosen me as his running mate instead of John Edwards, then we wouldn't have had to suffer those terrible Bush remarks about how he didn't choose Dick Cheney for his hairdo. Vote Kerry!!!

A. Hemon Reading

A. Hemon Reading
Originally uploaded by franksutter.

Aleksandar Hemon reads from his novel "Nowhere Man" to a group of grad writing students (and a few alumni) at CCA. Here's my favorite sentence in his book, on page 190 of the hardcover edition: "The possibility that the world could never respond to his desires tortured him."

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The Paris Review

I titled this "The Paris Review" because I just heard they have archived all of their past author interviews online. Perusing their website, I didn't find this to be true, although they have excerpts of many great interviews, including this incident from Paul Auster's childhood that I hadn't heard before:

INTERVIEWER

The most powerful story in that book would have to be the lightning story. You were fourteen years old when it happened. You and a group of boys went out on a hike in the woods, and suddenly you were caught in a terrible electric storm. The boy next to you was struck by lightning and killed. If we want to talk about how you see the world and writing, surely that would count as a fundamental moment.

AUSTER

That incident changed my life, there's no question about it. One moment the boy was alive, and the next moment he was dead. I was only inches away from him. It was my first experience with random death, with the bewildering instability of things. You think you're standing on solid ground, and an instant later the ground opens under your feet and you vanish.

*There is also a great quote from writer Paula Fox worth putting here:

FOX

At some point I began to value "truth," that elusive thing, more as I grew older—not only story. I recall lying on a bed, looking at a manuscript on the floor as I reached to turn pages, and thinking to myself, I must mean everything I say, every word, and feeling it as a profound moment in my writing life.

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