Bonnie Jo Campbell could beat me up.

I’m playing Literary Social Networking again. This was how I spent most of the winter months—I’d get a book I liked, go to the author’s website [almost all authors have websites,] see books they recommended, read those, then repeat the whole process. This time I looked at the blurbs on the back of THE LONELY POLYGAMIST, and saw one by a writer named Bonnie Jo Campbell, and saw that she had a collection of stories out called AMERICAN SALVAGE that had been a finalist for the National Book Award. I checked that out and am now going through her other work. AMERICAN SALVAGE is what I like to call “Grit Lit” although I imagine that is something I read somewhere else, I doubt if it’s something I came up with completely on my own. Not grit as in “grits and gravy” but grit as in rough and sandy. AMERICAN SALVAGE is mostly set in small town Michigan, with put-upon people who sometimes do drastic things. I have no idea who won the National Book Award that year, but I imagine the events and images of these stories might have been too much for whoever judged the whole thing. Still can’t get some of them out of my head.

Bonnie Jo Campbell lives in Kalamazoo, raises donkeys and is a martial arts enthusiast.
Not just karate or judo, but some other type that I haven’t heard of. Usually when people study a martial art that most people haven’t heard of, generally that means they are not someone to be trifled with. Even her website challenges,“Do you think you can beat me up?”

Another “grit lit” writer I enjoy is Daniel Woodrell [he uses the term "Country Noir" which is much better], who wrote WOE TO LIVE ON, a Civil War era novel that was adapted into the Ang Lee film RIDE WITH THE DEVIL. Although that’s what he’s most known for [so far] his more contemporary work is better in my opinion—I recently read what supposedly is a YA novel [at least that’s where my library had it] called WINTER'S BONE but I suspect my library may have just thought that was where it belonged because of the age of the protagonist, because its story set in the hills of Missouri is pretty harrowing, although some of the events have an almost mythic quality [if you read it, you’ll know what I mean.] I heard they’re making a movie of it.

Had a good thrift store find last week, SALVATION ON SAND MOUNTAIN, a non-fiction book about the snake handling churches in the South. I’ve read it before and really enjoyed it, I’m really glad to have found it. Back when I worked at Borders some annoying young person was all angry that we didn’t have it because she needed it for a class [I gather it was a situation where she had put off buying the book until the last minute.] This book had been a college textbook also [had the yellow USED sticker all colleges seem to have even since I was first in college nearly 20 years ago] so I’m guessing it is a commonly assigned text these days. I wonder what class uses it---I would guess some kind of sociology class. Fascinating book. I was raised in the Pentecostal church so I’m familiar with the basis of their beliefs, but of course, no one I knew ever took things that far [I think we used a verse about “not tempting the Lord thy God” as a warning not to deliberately do such things as drinking poison or handling rattlesnakes.]

I have been slow to blog lately but will probably do more at least for a while. Over the weekend I decided to severely curtail a lot of my “non-productive” internet activity such as participating on message boards, etc. I’ll still use Facebook because I like to keep up with friends and family members, but I want to cut down on that too. I want to write more…just started a new story, and maybe I will even manage to finish this one. I consider blogging a “productive” activity because it generally is a warm-up for writing or whatever else I need to do. I know other writers who use it the same way.
I’m still getting crap together for the tax audit. I want to at least start sending things although I don’t have everything they will probably need yet. It is such a waste of time, but I’m hoping that after they look at our bank statements they’ll realize it will cost more to examine everything than the measly 20-30 dollars that we’d end up paying even if they came to the wrong conclusion regarding our income for that year.

I’m hoping it’s one of those things where it ends up being a good thing in the end. I think I said this already, but the federal agency I hope to work for later this year will want to do an audit of the last few years, so they will need all this information so at least I will have it available right away. Maybe this is a sign that I’m going to need to do that in the future.