Northwest Passage

Some words on my influences the past few months:

The Detective story and its many variations. I've been reading Chandler's The Big Sleep. It's the first book I've read in ages that I feel like I can recommend to my father, but I'm sure he's read it already. This is the prototypical Detective novel; Colombo, Matlock and Dick Gumshoe have Philip Marlowe to thank for their existence. In reading it, I've been trying to cull from it some influence in its movement. The language is very quick, and descriptive passages are deceptively simple.

I also just recently finished Twin Peaks. It's easy to see why it was so popular. It's also to see why people stopped watching in Season 2. Still, it's interesting to see how Twin Peaks took the "straight lawman" character and played around with it. Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) was placed into the quiet town of Twin Peaks to investigate the murder of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). During the course of the investigation he discovers that Laura had a hidden life, and the hidden lives of everyone else in the town are revealed, leading to an escalation in action that shatters Twin Peak's former reputation as a quiet, peaceful town.

One of the questions the show asks is "What was the real reason for this escalation?" Was it the murder itself, or was it the arrival of this outside lawman? If Dale Cooper hadn't have been here, would everything have returned to normal after a week or so? Perhaps it would be better if the mystery hadn't been solved?

After the show I realized just how similar it was thematically to PAM. Sometimes, this discourages me, but in the case with Twin Peaks I feel like I can use it as an example of "what not to do." Do NOT forget the main mystery, or get lost in imagery, or give away the reveal too soon.

3-29-11

Oh right. The blog. Yeah, I suppose I can write in that.

I blew the whole thing up. There was a fundamental flaw in the premise of the PAM novel that needed to be corrected. Uninteresting beginning! I need to set the initial action of the book in a situation that is inherently tense. I've fast-forwarded the novel ahead in two months "novel time" so that Anna has already left and Dan is living in the house with his Uncle. The first chapter features Dan on his first day of work at the Orange House. A new character has been born out of this new setting, Nora's caregiver, who has yet to be named. I'm thinking something elegant and old-hat.

OMS is also in progress still, and it's become less a novel in my mind than a "short story mixtape." A collection of short stories with recurring characters that follow along a loose chronology, set to music. The track listing so far:

Teenage Riot
O! My Soul
Taste
Here Come the Warm Jets

More to be added as I see fit.

In other news, I hardly ever leave my apartment anymore. I have not had a cigarette in three months. I have not been drunk in half a year.