Hooker and Brown

As far back as 442 B.C., people have been warned not to kill the messanger just to avoid hearing bad news.
Sophocles told the stories of King Oedipus, who killed a messenger as punishment for the delivery.
Just the other night, I was visted by an old friend of mine who had just finished a Vision Quest, and was moved by the experience, but was sceptical of the surrounding spirituality and even hypocrasy voiced by some of the adherents. By this she meant the manner of talking about one’s “spirit” allowing a person to shun sleep and food, but then she sees them eating and sleeping, and they justify it with some other explanation.
At the core of it, she struggled with this story:

A man on his vision quest (done alone for between one and four days, so sometimes referred to as a ’solo’) sat looking at a tree. It was a rocky windy place and he hunched around his fire in his blanket. he asked the tree: how do you survive here?
The tree said nothing. As the day wore on into night, and the man grew closer to the elements and let go of his thoughts and distractions, he kept asking the tree: how do you survive here? The tree said nothing. Finally, as the solo was coming to a close and the smoke from the sweat lodge (traditionally used to end the quest) floated up over the trees, the tree said: Deep Roots.

My friend was told that this man took away that he needed to put down roots in his life and make some commitments. He came away with a new purpose, and somewhat relieved to have an answer to what was troubling him.

My firend however wondered, what if the tree had said nothing? What it had said something different?
Was that really the guy’s question and the best answer? Was the tree really talking or did the guy hallucinate in his state of dehydration and exposure? The guides at the quest (I know them) hinted at some answers, but stayed vague, whish troubled my friend.

But why? I see this a lot these days: some fantastic occurrance that delivers a message, and people get all crasy about trying to fathom the messanger. Of course this is important, as the quality and crdibility of the messanger lends credance to the message.

But should it matter if the message is good?

I see the Jesus, the Bhuddha, Confucious, Mohammed all said some wise messages. But it seems people have to build a shrine or an established organization around the messanger, to inflate the message. Isn’t the message clear and good enough? Why the need to question and construct?

Take the message or leave it.

I wonder if this is why non-fiction sells better, or fiction “based on a true story”? People seem to need to verify the messanger for veracity. Otherwise it is “just” a story. But isn’t all messages? That’s why I love fiction. Forget the messanger - he is a liar. No one is trying to dispute that.

He is a liar.

Fine. Now hear his message and judge for yourself. Is it a good message?
I wonder if the need to judge teh messanger is an excuse to be lasy with the harder work of judging the message. If you trust the messanger, then you don’t have to do any more thinking (work). It becomes dogma and you stand up and fight for it.

I just hope people keep that in mind with my fiction. I am not a character. I am all of my characters.

My publisher has been forwarding me blurbs from some luminaries that she has had read the book and the results are stunning me. It is strange to suddenly be looking at the book from the outside, and seeing how others regard it, after so many years of being immersed in the pages and words. Suddenly the book seems to have a physical solidity to it. A finality.

It is a new feeling. But so is hearing what they’re saying. How could I be anything but thrilled and awed by their words and the sense of accomplishment after so much work:

With this powerful and highly poetic first novel Jerry Auld achieves a new peak in the literary interpretation of the nature, history and culture of the mountain West. It is a book about the power of maps and dreams that explores our relationship to gravity and ghosts, rock, water and place with an ending that will leave you breathless. Auld confirms once again that no one returns from the high places unchanged.

– Robert Sandford, Cultural Historian

Like a polished stone, Hooker & Brown reveals layers of time, meaning and beauty.

– Thomas Wharton, author of “Icefields”

What they do, they do really really well. After the years of hunched over in solitary spaces working on the imagined scenes and dialogs and characters, the book is taking its first tentative steps out into the big wild. The publisher was fairly arms-length during the editing process letting myself and the editors work out the issues, and they were of course, working on the books that were being launched then. But now they are front and center – my book has moved up on the schedule so now they are working actively on it and I get to see what they really do. It is impressive.

All the marketing, the promotion, the organizing is just starting, but already they can call upon bookstores and venues, other authors for blurbs and reviews, the papers and radio for interviews, that not only would I not be able to do as an independent writer, but I honestly would hardly know where to start.

There is a lot of talk within the book world of the self-publishing becoming less of a stigma, less of the vanity and more of the press, so to speak. And last year, for the first time, more books were self-[published in the U.S. than were by publishers. Even though some tout this as a breakthrough, I do wonder at the quality of the self-published books: I know my own work only gets better (usually much better) when it goes through the peer-review and editing process. But now, after seeing what a publisher can do for a writer, I am firmly convinced, and thrilled, that the way to go is still solidly with the professional publishers. I don’t intend to be harsh, and I know I have to live with this too, but if you can’t get your book out through a publisher, then you haven’t found the right one, or the book is just not ready to be out there.