Wow, moving swiftly through the rewrite of The Porn Writer. Already done with Chapter 22 and only four more chapters to go. I don't know how this will be received by women agents, and women agents are the majority of literary agents these days. It's full of long passages of pornography that the old porn writer is writing in despair of any success in more literary fields and the pornography of his primarily sexual encounters with Cora, a victim of incest. But the novel is about sexual addiction from a man's point of view, rather than from a woman's point of view, even though everything I put in the novel about Cora I learned from women who were victims of incest. Don't worry, Cora is not based on any real woman. She's a conglomerate. Though I treat my hero, Frank, very unkindly, I'm trying to make the point that when a victim of abuse hooks up with a victim of abuse, it's a dance they do for which they both are responsible, even though our society is always quick to blame the male because he's physically stronger.
Also, the Spring 2015 issue of 4x2 is in my hands and, as always, the book itself is well made and interesting and the poetry of Klipschutz and Michael Hannon is sterling silver. Here's a sample of Hannon's work:
THE MUSE
I don't go to her, she comes to me,
red with unspeakable crimes, and her hair is a black wind
annihilating worlds to get at the door in my bed.
It takes forever to get her clothes off,
and I don't have forever.
Not much to say from this rabbit, except that I'm dashing my way through The Porn Writer and am already, in two weeks, 16 chapters into the rewrite. So far, I'm not disappointed by what I wrote and find this novel as authentic as my poetry in Gray House By Cold Mountain. Don't know if modern people still have the sexual hangups those in my generation had. I know, so far, every word in The Porn Writer is true to what I felt, thought and did in those times. Confused and bombarded at every hand by every headline, book and magazine, movie and words of others, I was having a very hard time of it. Don't know if the ending will be upbeat or whether it will allow my protagonist, Frank, to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Or if that light will be the headlight of a freight train.
I've got five queries out to agents for Ghoul World but am wandering if the title is quite what it ought to be?
