Cormac McCarthy’s Olivetti typer is going up for auction, so sayeth the NYTimes. They’re expecting to fetch 20K for the thing, which means we’d only have to sell 150,000 stickers… or something. Anyway, here’s the supa sweet money quote:

Glenn Horowitz, a rare-book dealer who is handling the auction for Mr. McCarthy, said: “When I grasped that some of the most complex, almost otherworldly fiction of the postwar era was composed on such a simple, functional, frail-looking machine, it conferred a sort of talismanic quality to Cormac’s typewriter. It’s as if Mount Rushmore was carved with a Swiss Army knife.”

Some poor bored working stiff in an office at a publishing house somewhere got a copy of a book across his desk recently and, on a whim, actually decided to open it. Perhaps it was result of an under-stimulated and over-caffinated mind, perhaps the guy was still really drunk from the night before, either way he really enjoyed it. This tie-choked bastard called his boss, who may or may not have been reeling from a successful quadruple bypass surgery and soaking in regret over his wasted youth pimping the work of others rather than living his own life. Whatever the mitigating circumstances, these misguided suits decided to pick up this book and add it to their “list of titles that should be shoved down the throat of the American public”. There’s just one catch: they don’t like the title. They don’t want to lose the title entirely, they just want to add a subtitle, something that captures the essence of the story and makes you laugh out loud and want to buy it even if you’ve never fly fished or gone to Alaska before, and they want this done in six words or less. Of course I told them no problem but rather than do any actual work, I’d rather pass this one along to the Buster cronies and sit on my ass some more. So here it is, the newest and most laserest awesomest Buster caption contest ever. If you are brilliant and/or lucky enough to come up with something that makes us all laugh our beer guts off, you will have the everlasting satisfaction of knowing that you helped out your fellow man and got your words printed on a book that at least five people will probably buy. Additionally I’ll throw in some stickers, a signed copy and a day of me rowing you around while we drink beer and don’t catch fish, ie a free “guided trip”, if you can make it out to Montana. Have at it brain-trust.

Ahhh, the life of a successful flyfishingphotojournalist, on the road and at the peak of his game. Fans awaiting you in every new town, everyone wants to take you fishing, pick up your bar tab, hotties literally throwing themselves at your highly-literate feet…and, well, occasionally you wake up in a pink room full of stuffed animals wondering how you got there. But that’s just the way life on the literary edge is lived, man, and most will only dream of it.

But then sometimes, on those rare occasions, a book tour takes on a twisted life of its own, making an abrupt left at an unmarked dirt road in the middle of that metaphorical cornfield that stretches to the horizon, hoping you’re going the right way, as shadows lengthen and darkness descends. It enters another, slightly creepy dimension, maybe even a little bit mystical, in that way that makes you look over your shoulder and your short and curlies stand on end. Just as you’ve begun to struggle with your meteoric rise into that rarified air reserved for fly fishing’s elite superstars, still trying desperately to maintain an air of humility (that your friends deny you ever truly had), the fates throw you a curve ball designed to test the very core of your very human-ness, temping you into believing not only in your own  immortality, but your downright unquestionable divinity.

We’re talking, of course, about a devoted fan discovering your likeness on a common, everyday food item:

Gaper, dear brother, wherever you are on that double-line destiny with the next hamlet of adoring fans, we beg you to maintain some sense of healthy skepticism and watch your back. And check in a little more frequently, cuz we’ve got a weird feeling about this. At least until the lab results are back…

of reading history where the events happened. Particularly high up on the east face of the Cochise Stronghold.

When I felt like a break, too bad the view totally sucked [/that’s a joke]

My only complaint being that the bro-brah brigade came through sometime earlier and scarred a rockface with sport climbing bolts. Pricks

In the Days of Victorio; Recollections of a Warm Springs Apache by Eve Ball, Narrated by James Kaywaykla

(The Narrator as a Child, with his mother Gouyen and stepfather Kaytennae)

I first heard of Eve Ball through Dan Carlin’s excellent podcast series ”Hardcore History” when he had an episode entitled “Apache Tears”. I was able to locally track down a copy of one of her books, namely the one you are reading about now.  In it James Kaywaykla describes his youth until about the age of ten as a free Warm Springs Apache in Victorio’s band. His grandfather was the Chief Nana, whom despite an advanced age and a broken foot, fought until the end against the Mexicans and Americans. At the time of the writing, Kaywaykla was the last survivor of the battle (or massacre) at Tres Castillos where Victorio died by his own hand rather than be captured.

Now that the brief summary is over with, the first thing that struck me about the book is that this is an old man describing his childhood as a participant in the last Western Indian War. The passage below is from the introduction by Kaywaykla and sets the tone for his history:

“Until I was about ten years old, I did not know that people died except by violence. That is because I am an Apache, a Warm Springs Apache, whose first vivid memories are of being driven from our reservation near Ojo Caliente with fire and sword.”

That is almost a borderline mind fuck when you consider that he sat down with Eve Ball in the 1950’s to recount his childhood.

To me, what was different about this book is that it is one of the few about the Indian wars from a participant’s perspective. Kaywaykla’s narrative is clear and many of his childhood memories are in alignment with historical records and other accounts. His description of the contrast between living as freemen or softly imprisoned at the San Carlos Reservation leaves little doubt about why the Apache resisted “pacification” until they were almost exterminated as a people.

I highly recommend this one.

“Now wolves had come to follow them, great pale lobos with yellow eyes that trotted neat of foot or squatted in the shimmering heat to watch them where made their noon halt.” pg. 45

Six artists endeavor to illustrate every page of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, Or The Evening Redness In The West.

“I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history. Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs. Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men he has never known, as though they were familiar to him from his birth. Here at last he finds rest.”-W. Somerset Maugham , The Moon and Six Pence

**This just in from our “Rage to Riches” department**

Some of you may recall Gaper’s fine “AK. Chronicles” contributions to The Drake website a while back. And if you’re like me, you’ve probably had more than one mishap trying to balance your laptop while on the shitter. Well, some savvy publishing types (Departure Publishing, a new project by Tosh Brown) have wisely decided to immortalize all that laser awesomnality in book form. Check out their site and sign up to win either a free copy or the opportunity to offer your couch to Gaper.

Congrats, Gaper - couldn’t happen to a Suckier guy.

the weeping sucker

Greg Keeler is flawed. Which is fine ’cause I’m flawed and you are probably flawed too. Life is flawed. In fact it’s a one great big mess after another , in case you forgot. Most of the time it’s kinda funny how we trip and stumble through our days. Sometimes life’s obstacles are a pain in the ass and then there are times when life is just sad. Know what I mean? Depressingly, pathetically sad. And then after an appropriate amount of suffering everything gets better, right? Well, maybe.

There is a Raymond Carver story called “So Much Water So Close to Home” wherein a wife discovers — in dribs and drabs — that her husband and his buddies happened upon a dead body on their weekend fishing trip to the Naches River in WA. The fishermen, so intent on completeing a rare fishing trip together, simply tie the body off and keep fishing. They eventually report their findings but, as they say, first things first. The wife, however, is appalled.
This story was illustrated in Robert Altman’s Short Cuts as well as in an indie film called Jindabyne. The most affecting treatment, however, comes from Altman’s stark prose.

He called the others and they came to look. They talked about what to do. One of the men-my Stuart didn’t say which-said they should start back at once. The others stirred the sand with their shoes, said they didn’t feel inclined that way. They pleaded fatigue, the late hour, the fact that the girl wasn’t going anywhere.In the end they went ahead and set up the camp. They built a fire and drank their whiskey. When the moon came up, they talked about the girl. Someone said they should -keep the body from drifting away. They took their flashlights and went back to the river. One of the men-it might have been Stuart-waded in and got her. He took her by the fingers and pulled her into shore. He got some nylon cord and tied it to her wrist and then looped the rest around a tree.
The next morning they cooked breakfast, drank coffee, and drank whiskey, and then split up to fish. That night they cooked fish, cooked potatoes, drank coffee, drank whiskey, then took their cooking things and eating things back down to the river and washed them where the girl was.

A body was recently turned up along a river in Washington. Again, it was found by a fisherman. Nooksack Mac, echoing the characters in Carver, has a few questions.

Music is a big deal to the Buster gang, and here’s a new release that has tickled my fancy as of late. And who doesn’t like their fancy tickled from time to time? 

Ben Nichols, lead man of Lucero, is up to some more badassry. He’s going solo this time with the EP, The Last Pale Light in the West. This is the O-fficial companion piece to the theatrical release of Cormac’s Blood Meridian. I have given it a few spins and I am loving it. Like 169% loving it. The Last Pale Light in the West doesn’t officially release till October 10th, but they’ll give you a digital copy till you can get your hands on the candy. And Salty….breathe in, breathe out.

Track listing:

1. The Last Pale Light in the West
2. The Kid
3. Davy Brown
4. Chambers
5. Tobin
6. Toadvine
7. The Judge

Ben Nichols -vocals, acoustic guitar/Rick Steff - accordion/Todd Beane - pedal steel

There’s been plenty of awesome released over the last few weeks…Old Crow’s Tennessee Pusher and Calexico’s Carried to Dust being two prime examples. Git those two while I’m at it.

2007 video interview with Jim Harrison.

All American Author and Eater- NYT Interview with the author who talks about writing, cooking and life on the land.

Money Quote- “In my own lifetime, this country’s gone from 75% rural, 25% urban to the reverse. So you’ve got all these people who’ve never fed the chickens or held a piglet or petted a cow.”

Close second on why he likes living in rural areas “It’s further from the white car, white bread, white mind culture.”

Scientists have found a bunch of long-tailed macaques (steady now, that’s the easy joke) in Indonesia that fish.

“Groups of long-tailed macaques were observed four times over the past eight years scooping up small fish with their hands and eating them along rivers in East Kalimantan and North Sumatra provinces, according to researchers from The Nature Conservancy and the Great Ape Trust.”

Four times in eight years? Why, that’s barely a dalliance. And no gear? What the hell do they have to argue about during all that downtime? I’m beginning to doubt their commitment to monkeydom.

“Meijaard, a senior science adviser at The Nature Conservancy, said it was unclear what prompted the long-tailed macaques to go fishing.”

Ahhhh, there we have it, they’re fishing writers. Welcome Bobo, Chim-Chim and Snowflake.

“All America lies at the end of the wilderness road, and our past is not a dead past, but still lives in us. Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside. We live in the civilization they created, but within us the wilderness still lingers. What they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream.”

T.K. Whipple, Study Out The Land, University of California Press, 1943

A few months ago I received an advanced reading copy of Donald Ray Pollock’s short story collection “Knockemstiff” and I held off on writing about as it wasn’t due to be released until this month, but the time has come. It is a collection of interrelated short stories set in the rural southern Ohio hamlet of Knockemstiff and the tales are powerful to say the least. A few other people I know have gotten advanced copies and their comments run from “vivid” to “I wanted to take a shower” and “I don’t think southern Ohio will experience a boom in the tourist trade from this”

Go out and get some as it went on sale March 18th. As a bit of a preview, here is Pollock’s NYT commentary on Ohio politics. Money quote “a blond woman who walks around downtown carrying a cardboard sign reading, ‘You are living on Indian land.’ I love this place.”

Angler: “Good sir, what do you consider thee most difficult aspect of mastering the venerable spey stylee?”

Pescador: “It has been noted and I consider it true that thee most difficult aspect of mastering thee venerable spey stylee is informing your loving parents that you are, in word and deed, quite ghey.”

from “Travails of a Verry Worldly Angler, Verily”
–Sauk River Press, 1869

“While inside the vaulting of the ribs between his knees the darkly meated heart pumped of who’s will and the blood pulsed and the bowels shifted in their massive blue convolutions of who’s will and the stout thigh bones and knee and cannon and the tendons like flaxen hawsers that drew and flexed and drew and flexed at their articulations and of who’s will all sheathed and muffled in the flesh and the hooves that stove wells in the morning groundmist and the head turning side to side and the great slavering keyboard of his teeth and the hot globes of his eyes where the world burned.”

-Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses, Knopf 1992

(unshod and unbranded horse, Dry Canyon, Coronado National Forest)

Extra Special Bonus:

No Country For Old Men

“Captain Nemo remained motionless, as if petrified in mute ecstacy.”

Jules Verne. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. New York: Scribner’s, 1946

Illustration by W.J. Aylward