In-progress

Working title: Seven Beauties

Currently at work on a story about an immigrant family’s life in America. It’s a tale of a Sicilian family—the superstitious Baldo clan, led by wannabe mafioso Joe, his day-dreaming wife Maddalena, and their seven feisty daughters—whose efforts to survive in a harsh environment during the post-Depression years tests the boundaries of endurance. The family is colorful and spirited but faced with unimaginable challenges, thanks in part to the prevalence of racism and violence. The novel is narrated by Zeta, the eighth daughter of Maddalena, who died shortly after birth (neonatal death). Which is to say the story is told by a ghost. Matters are also complicated by the family’s violent patriarch, a clever Sicilian with a mysterious past. Joe’s obsession with the mafia spells nothing but trouble for everyone. Things fall apart for the Baldos when Joe is sent to jail and Maddalena and her daughters are left to fend for themselves. What unfolds is an amusing story about class, race, and the absurdity of the American Dream.

Working title: Aliens Ate My Cow: Astonishing Adventures in the American Uncanny.

Book/media project on ET culture and the bizarre twists and turns of underground storytelling, from the Roswell case and alien abduction to the weird tales out of Utah’s Skinwalker Ranch. In each adventure, the narrative travels to an alleged hot spot connected to ET mythology, places where rumors of otherness erupt into reality. The White Mountains, Nevada Desert, Trout Lake, San Louis Valley, Roswell, Exeter, Sherman Ranch, and so on. The lore emerging from these sites may be as improbable as any tall tale, but that is the point of any ancient or modern myth—to flirt with the sublime. In mainstream media, of course, talk of alien abduction or close encounters is punished with ridicule and has been for over 50 years. Flirting with the sublime isn’t so easy today. Talk of ETs, in fact, is what Michael Foucault would call a forbidden discourse. Case in point. When younger, Guillermo del Toro the director claims to have seen a UFO. “I know this is horrible,” del Toro said. “You sound like a complete lunatic, but I saw a UFO. I didn't want to see a UFO.” This project is an effort to rescue themes, characters, and plot lines from America’s narrative unconscious, to recover the forbidden stories that, like peculiar dreams, embarrass our so-called better selves.

Working Title: The Anatomy of Digression 

This project looks at the wandering mind syndrome. I’m probably the most digressive person you haven’t met, so am the perfect narrator for this tale. I hope to place digressivity in a new and significant light, but also address the problem of distraction in a way that avoids the fallacy of single-mindedness. Rather than viewing the distractedness of contemporary culture as a unique and troubling side effect of new information technologies, I would like to show how, historically, distractedness has often been creative and strategically necessary, especially when a sense of cultural centeredness has been acutely unclear.

Here’s an outline of several chapters: The Raft of Odysseus, Zen and the Art of Zigzagging, The Etcetera Principle, The Pursuit of Lostness, How to Digress like the French, The Fly, How to be Sad While Staying Fit, The Autobiography of a Brain, and Leopold’s Ghost: A Walker’s Guide to Joyce’s Dublin. In addition to reviewing literary works like Homer’s Odyssey, Joyce’s Ulysses, and W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, all of which offer evidence of the cognitive values of the digressive mode, the project also includes creative chapters (such as The Fly) that enact different styles and forms of digression in an effort to explore distractedness from the inside out. As such, this project provides a mix of cultural history, literary interpretation, and creative writing.