Pyle drove to the junior college and turned into the entrance.
He drove
to the Language Arts building and parked.
He took his cap out of his bag
and put it on. His hair was dry.
He wore it bill forward.
Heap walked up to the registration desk, to pick up his nametag, and get
a program.
As a presenter, he got in free, and got to hear the keynote speaker,
at the luncheon, too. Michael Connelly.
He would add the nametag to his
collection.
He didn't go to Oktoberfest anymore.
Last year, they stole his pop-up
tent.
The Downtown Improvement Board (DIB).
* * *
In the center of the picture, below his YU News Service Press card, and above
his Junior Museum, Maintenance, ID card, is an aluminum disk about the size of a
silver dollar.
His grandfather's dogtags from World War I.
* * *
Pyle said hello to Michael Lister, who organized the conference.
Michael's wife and kids were helping out at the registration desk. It was a family
affair.
His parents were there, too. And his sister.
* * *
Pyle pinned the nametag over the beer logo on the front of his T-shirt.
He went to get a cup of coffee and a glazed donut.
Seize the donut. Carpe
donut. He wrote a book called CARPE DONUT once.
Or did he change the name?
* * *
Pyle left five copies of Bukowski Never Did This at the bookstore.
The lady running the bookstore took his name and address. So they could send him
a check.
"Oh, you won't sell any," he said. "It's just a
formality."
* * *
He went in to the auditorium and took a seat up front, to drink his coffee,
eat his donut, and study the program.
* * *
Mike had scheduled him opposite his, Lister's, afternoon session with Michael
Connelly, so Pyle wouldn't get to hear that.
Plus, that would draw a crowd,
so Pyle would probably not get many takers, for his session on Black Papers: The
Dark Side of Publishing.
What's that about?
* * *
Derek Raymond wrote a book called The Hidden Files about what writing
black novels, novels like I Was Dora Suarez, did to a writer.
Pyle
called it a black memoir.
* * *
In it, Raymond wrote,
Writing Suarez broke me; I see that now. I don't mean that it broke me physically or mentally, although it came near to doing both. But it changed me; it separated out for ever what was living and what was dead...If you go down into the darkness, you must expect it to leave traces on you coming up...I know I wondered half way through Suarez if I would get through. I mean, if my reason would get through...you become what you're writing.
And:
What is remarkable about I Was Dora Suarez has nothing to do with literature at all; what is remarkable about it is that in its own way and by its own route it struggles after the same message as Christ...the writing of Suarez, though plunging me into evil, became the cause of my seeking to purge what was evil in myself...Suarez was my atonement for fifty years' indifference to the miserable state of this world; it was a terrible journey through my own guilt, and through the guilt of others.
Is that what we'd be talking about today?
What writing black novels
does to a writer's psyche?
* * *
Stewart Home was a fan of Derek Raymond, whose real name was Robin Cook.
Home read a lot of noir fiction. And literary theory. Aesthetics.
He combined
critique, poetics, and popular story telling. Poetics, critique, and popular story
telling. Popular story telling, poetics, and critique.
Also, Cook, as Derek
Raymond, was a rock star in France.
The French love things like his Factory
series with the nameless detective.
Home was big in Finland.
* * *
Lightning Hopkins was fierce in the neighborhoods of Houston.
Pyle
was big in Point and Shoot.
It all comes down to neighborhoods.
Nelson
Algren said he didn't live in Chicago, he lived in a neighborhood.
Chicago
was a city of neighborhoods.
All cities are cities of neighborhoods.