CHICANONAUTICA FORGETS THE ALAMO

Actually, it's a Chicanonautica book review, over at La Bloga.

This one is making news:

Fighting the Hollywood myth:

That’s engrained into Americano culture:

Soon folks will be singing a different tune:

KISMET IN PRESCOTT

Emily and I have been feeling restless lately, the need for impromptu road trips keeps overtaking us. This time, after coffee and quiche at a place I won’t mention because they have been getting too crowded lately, she looked at me and said, “Let’s do something!”

It was as if a djinn was whispering in her ear.

Soon we were on the 89, past Wickenburg. There were still Trump flags dotting the rural landscape. Trump country, with roadside datura.

We ended up in Prescott, poking around the Whiskey Row antique shops, not really expecting to find anything, just fooling around . . .

I was disappointed in a bookshelf where I had found interesting oddities--counterculture relics, ancient pulp fiction, accounts of cannibalism--in the past when Emily blurted out, loud and serious, "Ernie, you have to come over here!"

I rushed over expecting to have to rescue her from some unlikely situation, but there she was in front of another bookshelf. She was pointing to an impressive set of books. It was the 1950 edition, leather bound, of Sir Richard Francis Burton's translation of the Alf Layla wa Layla, or The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, popularly known as The Arabian Nights, with all the fascinating footnotes, and all but one of the supplements. The price was $75 dollars.

I've wanted this set of books ever since I checked volumes from the West Covina Public Library in my 20th century youth. Reading Tahir Shah’s account of acquiring a copy in his own Arabian Nights further stoked that fire, but it was a "one of these days" things. 

Now that I'm a Medicare card carrying senior citizen, I realize that putting things off can mean it will probably never happen. I didn't hesitate. The incomplete set was very soon mine.

Kismet was in the air.

 

Then we went to lunch to celebrate. Whoopie!

 

We had ordered, but before our meal could be cooked, it was announced that there was a computer outage, and the restaurant would only be able to accept cash. We didn't have enough cash for what we ordered.

I hung out at our table while Emily did a run to the nearest ATM. She came back empty-handed. The outage had knocked out the internet in the entire city of Prescott.

If it had happened about an hour earlier, I wouldn’t have been able to make my purchase.

Guess it was just meant to be.

Luckily, they let us change our order to something that took just about all of the few bills the two of us had on us.

Somehow, we made it home without running out of gas.

Later, I did some Googling I found out that complete sets go for around $400. Copies of single volumes are about $30. 

I’ll have to keep an eye out for the missing volume, but that just gives me another excuse to go out and have more adventures.

CHICANONAUTICA SEEKS ATLANTEAN-BRAZILIAN WHITE PEOPLE

 

That’s right, in Chicanonautica, at La Bloga . . .

Down South American way:

Evidence of strange things from a long time ago:

In the Amazon:

Is there an Atlantis connection?

TERRIBLES, FOUR AND COUNTING . . .

 

Another Ishmael Reed novel! Why aren't people dancing in the streets?

They were just celebrating Juneteenth without masks, but dammit, the release of a new novel by the last man standing of America’s literary 1960s generation shouldn’t get lost in the interweb media shuffle. It’s also the continuation of his Terribles series, a futuristic caricature of modern America and an attack on Christmas--the season when bookstores make most of their money--and how it's central to western civilization. What more can you ask for in these apocalyptic times when transformation is the order of the day, every day?

Yes, NeoHoodooism is alive and well. It’s also Afrofuturistic, and Afrosurrealistic. Science fiction is just a small part of what’s going on here, and it doesn’t trip over itself like a sci-fi nerd stumbling onto the dance floor. It plugs into the myths that run our lives, our world.

It shows how even during the absurd Trump era, Ishmael Reed had no trouble coming up with material more outrageous than the evening news. This church and business-friendly dystopia would actually be appealing to some right-wingers. It goes beyond the Book of Revelations.

Not to commit a spoiler, but Nance Saturday turns out to me more than he appears to be.

In preparation, I reread The Terrible Twos and The Terrible Threes, and couldn’t help noticing that these books, like all of Ishmael Reed’s fiction, aren’t structured like conventional fiction. We don’t see the shootouts, chases, and sex/love scenes that all good bestselling pageturners are supposed to have. The Terribles are more like jazz (a blurb from Max Roach says: “. . . the Charlie Parker of American fiction”), and visual art with variations on themes and information-rich, complex compositions like those of Hieronymous Bosch, Diego Rivera, and cartoonists like Jack Davis, Will Elder, Spain Rodriguez, and S. Clay Wilson.

 

He did learn cartooning while writing his novel Juice!, in which the main character is a cartoonist. He illustrated Fours photo-montage cartoons.

And of course, it’s not static like a painting or mural; these tableaus move in long paragraphs and short chapters that set the skull spinning.

Then there's all those weird characters, all talking and acting out bizarre scenarios.

You can’t read these books too fast, you’ll miss the hilarious details, often several ideas on a page that other writers would use for entire novels.

 

Dare I imagine all the Terribles as an animated miniseries that send Netflix and Amazon into a bidding war?

Meanwhile, The Terrible Fives is in the works . . .

CHICANONAUTICA ASKS IF A CHICANO CAN BE MAINSTREAM

 

Chicanonautica, at La Bloga, asks if a Chicano can be mainstream.

Yes, there are Chicano writers.

Could one write the Great American Novel?

Should they write science fiction?

And for those of you who want advice on writing:

RECONNOITERING IN UTAH: PART TWO

Bicknell is past Torrey and a field of grazing bison. It’s where a state-run liquor store is, where we--after days of searching--found wine for Emily’s mother years ago. The highly recommended restaurant next to the Aquarius Motel was shut down, so we had lunch at Sunglow Drive-In (where we dined in).

The Capitol Reef Inn & Cafe was as arty as ever, and “Closed for the Season,” and seemed to be having construction and renovation going on.

There were tourists, mostly Americans. This is a change from the past in Utah, when we’d see mostly Europeans and Asians.

I had to take a picture of the Aquarius Motel sign because people probably wouldn’t believe it. It’s named for the Aquarius Plateau.

The next day, as Emily put it, “We spent a lot of time this morning stumbling around.”

In our post-COVID-19 world, small towns are no longer ready to go at 6 AM. A local told us: “Tourists come here and expect to get coffee at eight o’clock in the morning.” The Wild Rabbit in Torry had a huge crowd of people waiting outside, and Austin’s Chuckwagon was crowded with Americano tourists, and no masks anywhere. We donned ours and grabbed some turnovers to go and a heap of napkins. This must be the “unprecedented tourism” we heard about in Kanab.

Finally, we got in the line at the drive-thru at Dark Sky Coffee, where they had decaf and bear claws.

We sent most of the day hiking at Capitol Reef, where there were NO HUMAN WASTE IN TRASH stickers on the trash bins (yeah, it must be a thing). The otherworldly landscape was inspiring. Literally. Emily got ideas for scenes for her novel. Good. It’s working.

We ate at the Sunglow Drive-In again. Neither of us wanted to try the World Famous Pickle & Pinto Bean Pie.

And at the Aquarius Motel, a peacock could be heard calling.

Next morning, Torrey was still all closed up at 6:40 AM. The parking lots of all the motels were all full. Deer browsed in a front yard.

On Highway 24 we soon saw Martian cliffs glowing in the light of the rising sun. A lone man on a bicycle rode across the fantastic landscape and morning haze slashed with low-slung shadows. There was a Cathedral Valley, and Luna Mesa. Suddenly, I had the “Welcome to Mars” song from Cory McAbee’s Stingray Sam going through my head.

At the junction with the 95, we just had to stop at one of our favorite towns, Hanksville. We took a lot of photos at the dazzling and always inspiring Carl’s Critter Garden. 

And we finally found a place to get breakfast, Duke’s Slickrock Grill, that’s also a shrine to John Wayne with its menu items named after his movies. San Juan de Hollywood is becoming the Patron Saint of Traveling Caucasians. His images is everywhere. He seems to be saying, “Don’t worry, pilgrim, I’ll protect you from these here natives.”

Our next stop was another favorite, Hog Spring Recreation Area. The river was low, so we got to walk the Hog Canyon Trail.

Emily summed it up: “Route 95 kicks butt.”

At Natural Bridges National Monument, we went all the way down the Sipapu Bridge Trail. Sipapu is a Hopi word for a hole in the bottom of a kiva, or pithouse, that symbolizes the portal from which their ancestors came into this world. It was a Journey to the Center of the Earth-type experience.

We met some Korean tourists on the trail.

The CDC’s announcement didn’t change things in the Navajo Nation. Masks are still required. The lockdown is still in effect.

When we checked into the Kokopelli Inn, we were told that the Twin Rocks Cafe was closed Sundays, so we went to Comb Ridge for dinner. They didn’t have Navajo tacos, but I tried the Baja Tostada, that was more “Latin inspired” than Mexicanoid, and Emily got the Whiskey Burger, that didn’t have any whiskey in it.

The restaurant and the tiny town of Bluff were crowded, even with the pandemic still going on. America seems willing to come back with a vengeance. White people are eager to go out and spend money. And this isn’t even summer yet.

We headed home the next day, taking the 261, the scenic route through Monument Valley.

There were some masked hitchhikers on the Rez, unidentified roadkill at the roadside, a solar farm, microwave towers, as the cinematic monuments melted into shark-toothed mountains. Everything was turning into something else. An endless process. We’re just seeing one frame of the movie . . .

Then, I got inspired. 

Suddenly, my brain was flooded with ideas for a sequel to High Aztech. I had thought about it before, but it was all without form and substance. Now I had workable ideas. I took some notes.

I really don’t need another project right now, and I don’t know how marketable it would be, but things are in flux, opportunities are opening up, better be ready.

Yeah, these places are just plain inspiring. These rocks have things to say. We better listen to them.

CHICANONAUTICA COMMITS A BLATANT, UNASHAMED ACT OF SELF-PROMOTION

Chicanonautica, at La Bloga, is all about the upcoming publication of my story “Those Rumors of Cannibalism and Human Sacrifice Have Been Greatly Exaggerated” in Speculative Fiction for Dreamers: A Latinx Anthology.

 

 

The story is about truckers:

 

And an anthropologist:

In Aztlán:

And New Mexico: