Long-haul Trucker

Joyce Carol Oates read tonight and it was simply amazing. Her story, which imagined the last days of Ernest Hemingway's life, had a deeply affecting compassion for the characters, delivered with a lyric intensity that seduced a listener, like a snake charmer's flute to a cobra. After nearly two weeks at Skidmore--my time spent considering and reconsidering and re-reconsidering how one tells a story--to hear something complete and successful and beautiful reminded me that it can be done, and why I want to do it.

Afterwards she took audience questions, and at one point compared her job as a writer to that of a truck driver. In essence, she makes the long haul, day and night and with blinding oncoming lights, occasionally careening into ditches and then having to get the darn thing back out the mud, all for the finish line. Which isn't really a finish line but a quick rest stop, before making the trip again.

Random non sequitur: check out this house. Who knew Agoura was so hip?