Joe van Cleave – C.M. Mayo's Book Notes & Convos

Frederick Turner’s “In the Land of the Temple Caves: From St. Emilion to Paris’ St. Sulpice, Notes on Art and the Human Spirit”

Thanks to my fellow typospherian Joe van Cleave’s recommendation, in Frederick Turner’s In the Land of the Temple Caves: From St. Emilion to Paris’ St. Sulpice I now have both a sparkling addition to my annual Top Books Read (posted every December) and to my workshop’s list of recommended literary travel memoirs. What prompted me to read In the Land of the Temple Caves, aside from an avid interest in American literary travel memoir, is that I’ve been a devotée of rock art ever since I first encountered some jaw-dropping examples of it in remotest Baja California and, as those of you who follow this blog well know, I have long been at work on a book about Far West Texas, and that includes the Lower Pecos which has some the most spectacular and ancient rock art of the Americas. (Listen in to my podcast Gifts of the Ancient Ones: Greg Williams on the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands; also see my 2015 post “On the Trail of the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos.”)

Ring-a-ling to Dr. Jung! I happened to get my hands on Turner’s memoir just before a trip to Paris in which, not having heard of his book, I had planned to visit St. Sulpice and so, by happenstance, on the very day I finished the book, which concludes in St. Sulpice, there I was, looking at the very same Eugène Delacroix murals. That was wiggy.

I regret that I do not have the time this week to give In the Land of the Temple Caves the thoughtful review it deserves. Suffice to say, it came out over a decade ago, and I am astonished that I had not heard of it earlier. It deserves to be considered a classic of American, and indeed English language, literary travel memoir.

Peyote and the Perfect You

Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America by Richard Parker

Literary Travel Writing: Notes on Process and the Digital Revolution

“What Happened to the Dog?” A Story About a Typewriter, Actually, Typed on a 1967 Hermes 3000

Includes the story by C.M. Mayo, “What Happened to the Dog?”

Of late I have become an enthusiast of typewriting— the machine I am working on these days is a refurbished Swiss-made 1967 Hermes 3000, and quite the workhorse it is! (Ribbons? Kein Problem.) Of course I do most of my writing on my computer using Microsoft Word; WordPress for this blog; not to mention multitudinous hours spent with ye olde email program. But for laser-level attentional focus–and percussive energy!– the typewriter is something special, and as time goes by, the more I use it, the more I appreciate it. In fact, I now use my typewriter for one thing or another (drafts, notes, letters, recipe cards) almost every day.

Though I have yet to meet him in person, my mentor in the Typosphere is none other than Richard Polt, professor of philosophy at Xavier University and the author of some heavy-weight tomes on Heidegger, and, to the point, a practical manual I often consult, and warmly recommend to anyone thinking of buying a typewriter, or, say, hauling Grandpa’s out of some cobwebbed corner of the garage: The Typewriter Revolution. As “Richard P.” Professor Polt also maintains a blog of the same name. And now he, Frederic S. Durbin, and Andrew V. McFeaters, have put together a pair of anthologies, both just published, the second of which, Escapements: Typewritten Tales from Post-Digital Worlds (Loose Dog Press, 2019), includes a story of mine: “What Happened to the Dog?”

(Well, I guess it got loose, haha.)

An “escapement,” by the way, is the mechanism in a typewriter that shifts the carriage to the left as you type. If you want to get nerdy about escapements, and pourquoi pas?, be sure to check out typospherian Joe Van Cleave’s extra crunchy video on escapements. Joe Van Cleave’s typed short story appears in the first Loose Dog Press anthology, Paradigm Shifts: Typewritten Tales of Digital Collapse.

Herewith, “What Happened to the Dog?” (Caveat: undoubtedly the photographs in the book itself are of better quality; these I just snapped with my smartphone, too quickly, I daresay, in a rush to make the PO with the originals.) May this entice you to buy the ridiculously low-priced anthology of a cornucopia of wildy-imagined stories by many other writers, now available at amazon.com— and better yet, have a go at typing your own pre-/post-digital fiction.

*“What Happened to the Dog?” by C.M. Mayo in Escapements, edited by Richard Polt et al, 2019. Story* © *Copyright C.M. Mayo 2019. All rights reserved.*

My writing assistant answers the title question: She was having a perfectly reasonable morning siesta when, suddenly, this book appeared on her back. She reports that this reminded her, mistily, of a previous life as a dimetrodon.

Those of you who follow this blog may be wondering, what perchance, and by jumpingjacks, does this short story about a typewriter have to do, and by the way what has happened with, the book in-progress on Far West Texas? The question of technology has turned out to be central to what I am writing about Far West Texas. (Darkly: there will be Heidegger quotes.)

Fingers crossed that I can finally get the next Marfa Mondays podcast up Monday after next.

Next Monday, the second of the month, I post here for the writing workshop. More anon.

Consider the Typewriter (Am I Kidding? No, I Am Not Kidding)

Texas Pecan Pie for Dieters, Plus a Review of James McWilliams’ The Pecan

This Writer’s Distraction Free Smartphone (DFS): First Quarter Update

Visit my website for more about my books, articles, and podcasts.

“Round N Round” on the 1963 Hermes Baby

Uh oh (I can begin to see how this gets out of hand!) I just brought home a second vintage Swiss-made typewriter, a 1963 Hermes Baby, which is a sight lighter at 3.6 kilos (just under 8 pounds) and more compact than my 1961 Hermes 3000. It is in excellent working order, klak, klak!

He has not expressed himself verbally on the matter, but it would seem that my writing assistant would prefer that I use the MacBook Pro. Also, geesh, it was ten minutes past suppertime.

From Meteor, my collection which will be out from Gival Press later this month:

>More about Meteor on my webpage.

>More about the Hermes Baby at the Australian blog ozTypewriter and at the Swiss Hermes Baby Page by Georg Sommeregger (in German, but Google translation available).

On the Hermes Baby I am also typing up my story (originally written on the laptop), “What Happened to the Dog?” for COLD HARD TYPE: Typewriter Tales from Post-Digtal Worlds. More about that anon.

Meanwhile, whilst strolling about the Rio Grande outside of Albuquerque, my fellow COLD HARD TYPE contributor Joe Van Cleave ponders the Typosphere, its relation to digital media, and the ultimately analog origins of the digital: