A Christmas Treat

An actual, internet-mediated phone conversation with a blogfriend and admirer of J's --all the way from Korea!  I've written about him before (especially here).  Give yourself a Christmas treat and read around in his blog a little.  It will make you realize all over again that blogging is the perfect medium for untenured, unclassifiable minds, minds so strongly and intrinsically motivated to do what they do that they will do it for free.  It strikes me that academia, like newspapers, is eventually going to have to adapt to this new reality or die. 

It also strikes me with force that . . . well, I predicted that this phone call would cause J some entertaining geographical confusion, and sure enough, he just asked me, "Do your parents know you're in Korea?"  What I did not predict was how he came all the way out of a groggy half-sleep to be lucid and grand, the old J, with someone who expressed appreciation for his story.  I virtually smacked myself in the forehead ("I coulda had a V8!") -- I have a complete manuscript of his,  the story of his immigration to the New World and his brief boxing career, on the computer, ready for editing, lovingly typed onto a disc almost three years ago by a Feldenkrais friend's son during a spell between employments.  How is it that I haven't edited and published it??  Seeing how J comes to life when recognized as a storyteller and writer, I feel almost criminal for fatalistically sitting on that.  Somehow, among all the things I have to do, I have to bring that one to the front.  Kick me if I don't, will you?

He wrote that book (which I titled Greenhorn) when we already knew each other, and one of the things I liked about it (but that made our typist blush and disapprove) was the frank but innocent and feeling-ful way he wrote about sex.  I'd never seen a male write about it like that.  (Maybe it shoulda been "Greenhorny"?)  For many reasons, it was in a way my favorite of his books, but like all his books, needed and still needs editing.  We couldn't get it published back in the day, and the discouragement of that is why it's never seen the light of day, but now that there's POD (as I'll post after the holidays, iUniverse seems to be going down the tubes, but there are others), there's no excuse. 

Donbas is also about to be optioned by a pair of just-starting-out Romanian filmmakers, a producer who just graduated from AFI and a director who just won the Palme D'Or at Cannes for his short film (trailer).  Like anyone sadder but wiser in these businesses, I'm pessimistic, knowing that the director (who first expressed an interest in Donbas two years ago) is now going to be courted by people with projects and money who can offer a much faster track to the center of things.  But still -- it's life.  And it ain't over till it's over.

Thanks, Gypsy Scholar, for firing up that train of thought.  I can't get so overwhelmed looking after the body that I forget the soul.

Comments

[Khaki Elephant]

Wonderful link. Thanks for the lead.

And have a wonderful holiday!

[Horace Jeffery Hodges]

Thanks, Amba. I really enjoyed the conversation even though I usually avoid the telephone. I did get a cellular phone about a year ago, though, and that has actually worked out rather well because no one ever calls me on it.

I'm still a hillbilly at heart, I reckon, a sort of natural-born, untheoretical Luddite.

With you and Jacques, however, I felt at ease despite the technology between us, so we'll have to do this again next Christmas.

Jacques mentioned some books other than Donbas, so maybe he and you are operating on the same wavelength and will together get those works published.

Jeffery Hodges

* * *

[Peter Hoh]

There are a lot of threads in the tapestry.

Who knows about the film. A few years back, a young filmmaker and a few friends found Charis Wilson and brought her story to a new audience through film.

I got to hear the filmmakers at a screening in Minneapolis. It was touching to hear them describe her reaction to their movie.

[Richard Lawrence Cohen]

I'll buy copies.

And Romanian films are "in" these days ("Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days"). Who knows?

Happy New Year to y'all.

[amba]

Hey Richard! You, too.