“I used to cry in a genre no one read. What a joke, they said, on fire. There’s no money in it, son, they shouted, smoke from their mouths.” – Ocean Vuong, “Nothing”
Nazis unwelcome: here’s my post about moving this blog off of Substack soon. I might put this stinger on every post until then to try to irritate Nazi Sympathizer Hamish McKenzie. I might forget/get bored and stop. Not today though!
Cotton Xenomorph’s “Cryptids and Climate Change” issue continues—get light with “Silhouettes In The Snow” by Orion Emerick.
Real quick brag—my short story “He Is The River Monster” was chosen as a finalist for Fractured Lit’s Ghosts, Fables, and Fairy Tales contest, judged by Aimee Bender. I don’t get publication or prizes or anything. I just get to know that my favorite writer thinks my short story is pretty good. I could’ve gone my whole life not knowing what my favorite writer thinks of my writing. So if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be FLYING off this for the rest of the summer.
For the record, I had this idea before the Celtics did it last night. We’re a little late to be reminiscing about Bill Walton, but honestly? He’d probably say we’re right on time. Bill Walton was a man who truly loved basketball and life, a man who lived with a gratitude we should all try to emulate. If you can really, intensely love something as comparatively pointless as a sport—and love it on an aesthetic level, a pure “I just think this is a fun and beautiful” level—it kinda prepares you to deal with living, which is often unfair, cruel, absurd, and unjustly harsh. Bill Walton was Jabari Parker was Derrick Rose was Grant Hill was Penny Hardaway was any other promising young hooper preyed upon too ravenously by the injury bug. That he managed to overcome suicidal depression and go on to be a champion in the NBA, a champion of the game, and a cheerleader of life—that’s something we honor here on the Shipwrecked Sailor blog.
But first, did someone say something about ravenously devouring?
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
One book that’s been sitting on my shelf, its back-cover description poking my brain ever since I read it in Women & Children First a year or so ago. Another book I picked up sort of on a whim, but knew I’d like. Neither disappointed, in fact, both dazzled me more than I expected—on different levels. This might be the best distillation of my reading habits, a super poemy poem book of poems, and a wild monster book full of blood-drinking Becomings. I’m talking, of course, about Time Is A Mother by Ocean Vuong and Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Snyder.
Time Is A Mother by Ocean Vuong: Once again, everyone already has read this book and has opinions on Ocean. But dudes! I loved this book, wildly, and far more than Night Sky With Exit Wounds—though no disrespect to that book. The poems here flow, expand, contract, leap. They’re playful, yet mining deep deep pain. There is, it almost goes without saying, the grieving of Ocean’s recently dead mother. And it’s just, in ways that are hard to articulate, a massive leap forward from someone who was already starting from a place of incredible talent. I picked this up almost on a lark, and am so glad I did.
Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Synder: Gonna save my parents and former pastor the trouble and say this isn’t one for book club, you can skip on to the links if you want. What a wild read! There’s gore and sex in ways I knew you could do in literature, but had never seen or experienced. Imagine Hannibal Lecter eating Ray Liotta’s brain out of his open skull, except it’s after lesbian BDSM sex. Imagine tumors that become wingéd monsters, awesome and terrible to behold like biblical monsters. Imagine the COVID-19 virus, except instead of losing your taste and smell, you start craving brains or blood.
In fact, let me stamp every possible gorey and sex-juice-drenched Content Warning on here, it’s all here, but especially: don’t read this book if you have COVID PTSD. Every issue here—the sex, consent, gore, murder of a member of a different race, etc.—is handled with care and sensitivity. I know that Lucy A. Snyder spent a lot of time on Twitter before writing this book. But, if you still have sleepless nights thinking about lockdowns or anti-mask tantrums or mass death—be prepared.
But also know that first and foremost, this is a monster book. Eldritch. It even bypassed my intense apocalypse fatigue because of how fun of a the-monsters-are-coming book this is. It’s super voicey—you are reading a book by an author who has clearly lived in a suburb in the Southern United States, who has spent a lot of time watching True Crime and Dr. Pimple Popper and cult documentaries and other things my wife also enjoys watching—but I found that voicey-ness fun. My favorite movie is The Big Lebowski and I loved the hell out of Inherent Vice. It’s high time Millennials got to populate the prose of 260-page novels with their own slightly cringey but endearing slang and mannerisms. Two small notes: 1) I don’t think the Old Gods, once awakened, would talk with “thine” and “thou” and “dost. King James/Elizabethan English was one moment in history, and not even that long ago, writers of SFFH. But who cares? 2) I did find the tense shifts a little jarring and having an unclear purpose, but you know what else is jarring with an unclear purpose? The Eldritch-born, octopus- and biblical-angel-led apocalypse. Read this book! It’s so fun.
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? On Bill Walton Remembrance Day, it can only The Grateful Dead. Which is a band I’ve never actually listened to. Let’s do this together. This is apparently the beginning of one of the Dead’s most highly-regarded performances.
Here’s the legend, the third-best basketball player and maybe greatest intellectual the NBA has ever had, talking about his dear friend Bill Walton. Honestly, this piece is what inspired me to do a whole Bill Walton thing. “He wanted to be more like me on the court, I wanted to be more like him off the court.” I also learned from this piece that Walton played the baritone, which, hey, me too. Shoutout euphoniums. Also love a reminder of both Kareem and Walton’s committed antiwar activism.
Hey, you wanna see Bill Walton try to block a shot with a shoe?
Only tangentially related to Walton, but Patrick Redford interviewing Vinson Cunningham for Defector has a lot about basketball that Walton would likely approve of, and Vinson has this gem about Walton that feels accurate: “Basketball offers us these characters that we can follow on 10-year, 15-year arcs. I mean, when Bill Walton died the other day, it meant something to me. Even though I never saw him play (I’m too young for that), I listened to him in various announcing booths for decades. He’s an icon to me, not in the sort of colloquial sense, but a literal icon, like a certain part of my brain only works if I think about something through Bill Walton, or name your person, whoever your basketball player is. It’s just been an incredible source of meaning in my life.
And it’s the corniest thing, but it’s definitely gotten me through sad times. Watching sports has served as the background of so many moments with my friends. Sometimes I remember something that happened between me and my friends, because we were at a bar and it was this game of this series. And this is beyond fandom, right? This is beyond the Knicks. It’s the NBA as a story, and as a show means a lot to me.”
Can’t talk about Walton with a montage of great Walton announcing moments. Rub some Temecula dirt on your arms, thanks for the noodles, this is called a glockenspiel.
Not related to Walton, but something in the spirit of Bill Walton: here’s the great Ricky O’Donnell at SBNation talking about Chicago’s own Jabari Parker rediscovering his love of basketball in Madrid. Jabari had a state-championship-filled time at Simeon and was a high NBA draft pick before ACL injuries derailed his career—sound familiar, either for Walton or any other Simeon standouts? Him learning to love basketball again at age 29 after so many gruesome injuries is a story Walton would want us talking about. Plus, Bill’d probably be pissed if all five links were about him.
What’re you still doing here? Wanna watch Coach Nick at Bballbreakdown run tape on the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers? I sure do. I can’t believe this video is 12 years old. I’ve watched it at least three times, which is an absurd amount of times to watch specific game film from 10 years before you were born.
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. Ask yourself: what would Bill Walton do? The answer is get high before work.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris