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James GAitis's Blog
November 21, 2009
- I’m a sentimental cat, particularly when it comes to cats and dogs and the love people share through them. So here’s my poem (an average sort of poem, I’ll admit) on that subject, published last week in The Blue Guitar, an online publication of the Arizona Consortium for the Arts. See page 27: http://www.theblueguitarmagazine.org/resources/Blue+Guitar+Fall+2009+76+pages.pdf
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October 21, 2009
- We were talking about the next species to come. The species after Homo sapiens. She said she hoped its defining characteristic would be a new sixth sense. And when I asked her what sense that might be she said, “A sense of guilt.” I formulated the idea that there already were members of the next species living here on our little planet. After all, it’s not always the case that a new ...
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October 10, 2009
- These words are written and posted on the internet by the power of the sun. And the fact of it makes me think of Richie Havens and Montana. We have just installed solar panels on our roof here on the very edge of the edge of Tucson, up against the Santa Catalina Mountains in the Sonoran Desert. And I feel like singing of the smiles returning to our faces. It’s not the first time we’ve ...
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October 3, 2009
- I had with me on the train a copy of D. H. Lawrence’s reflections on Italy, although there seemed little reason to open it with the countryside of neat vineyards and smoky olive trees and rising Tuscan hills passing by in endless shades of greens and browns and faded claytile reds. But I felt some comfort to have him with me nonetheless. For despite all the splendor of the art and architecture ...
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September 17, 2009
- James Gaitis It’s more than unlikely that I will ever read a Dan Brown novel. I’ve yet to read a novel by Grisham or King or Clancy (or to see a single Rocky movie), so why start now? I do appreciate how works of authors such as these might placate the general reading public but I prefer something more eclectic or classical or at least literary in the sense that I define that term. On the ...
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August 27, 2009
- . . . is mine! Oh, dear. Not exactly what I had in mind. Yesterday I learned that the publisher of my second novel—Kunati Books, ForeWord Magazine’s 2008 Publisher of the Year—has folded its financial tent. Now I find myself somehow out in the cold, not only in search of an agent but, also, a new publisher for a recently released book. Oh, my. It makes me feel young again. In a way that ...
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August 10, 2009
- James Gaitis © 2009 It is has been years now since I took the advice of the renowned editor Maxwell Perkins and immersed myself for the first time in Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Perkins, of course, was long dead by the time I took to reading Tolstoy’s novel of Russia’s pivotal role in defeating Napoleon and of the trauma and tragedy war brings to families great and small. So Perkins’ ...
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August 6, 2009
- I have the fairly unusual claim of having attended a high school (a public high school located in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago) named after a literary figure--John Hersey. I was a member of the entering freshman class when the school was opened (now many years ago) and I recall the speech John Hersey made during the commemoration ceremony. He was something of an inspiration at the time, and ...
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July 23, 2009
- Well, I've made it into the crime issue of New York's famous (some say infamous) Cool 'Eh Magazine and now can only hope I have not inadvertantly triggered a wave of vigilanteism amongst gun enthusiasts, rope-tying specialists, and the like: http://coolehmag.com/frontEnd/interview.php?i=47&s=82
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July 15, 2009
- James Gaitis © 2009 This much I now can tell you: The life of a satirist can be a lonely and misunderstood existence. I know. We satirists are often sorely mistaken, perhaps because it is difficult for the reader to pierce the veil of satire to understand the true meaning underlying the masked, satirical word. I have written a novel (a satire, to be sure) that it intended to be gender ...
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July 12, 2009
- James Gaitis © 2009 And here we go, again. For those of us who have fought for the re-integration and survival of the grey wolf in the Northern Rockies, the news that the Obama administration has approved the de-listing of the grey wolf as an endangered species in Montana and Idaho is truly a heartbreaker of monumental proportion. It is almost as though the new government (which we hoped to ...
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July 4, 2009
- James Gaitis © 2009 Here’s my understatement of the day: In a literary sense, it is an exceedingly difficult challenge for all but the very best of naturalist writers to follow in the heavy bootworn footsteps of Edward Abbey. Abbey, whom Larry McMurtry called “the Thoreau of the American West,” was so radically original in technique and delivery, so aggressively sincere in his ...
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June 27, 2009
- James Gaitis © 2009 “We had come to regard the work of writers and artists in our country as too compliant, as failing to expose or indict the escalating nerve of corporate institutions, the increasing connivance of government with business, or the cowardice of those reporting the news. In the 1970s and ‘80s, we thought of our artists and writers as people gardening their reputations, ...
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June 25, 2009
- James M. Gaitis © 2009 Ouch. Ouch. I’ve just finished reading Vonnegut’s semi-fictional and (like all of Vonnegut’s other works but arguably even more so) semi-autobiographical Timequake and I keep feeling as if both the past and future are jabbing at me jabbing at me jabbing at me (as Paula Poundstone might have said). As though the past and future are telling me ...
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June 16, 2009
- ALA Booklist—James Gaitis’ The Nation’s Highest Honor is “a quasi-dystopian futuristic story . . . [with] a certain charm” --“A quirky variation on the ever-popular dystopian tune”The Nation’s Highest Honor.Gaitis, James (author).May 2009. 256p. Kunati, hardcover, $22.95 (9781601641724). REVIEW. First published June 1, 2009 (Booklist). "As this quasi-dystopian futuristic ...
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