My absolute very favorite sentence I've written this year just fell off of me, like one of those muffler-tailpipe assemblages you've been meaning to get out and get under and get down and take a look at, because it's sure been rattling a lot lately, but every time you think of it, you're wearing something you don't want to get all greasy and grimy and and covered in shit. And then the next thing you know, there you are, a million miles down the road from nowhere, all late at night and all, and there's this blinding brilliant explosion of friction-sparks and a pretty blinding glorious grinding noise coming from right directly behind you. And your engine is suddenly roaring louder than hell too.
It came forth sideways from an exchange of letters with a friend, whose son has . . . well.... anyway:
"What year El Camino?"
That's the kind of writing I expect from me, and it's nice to know that I can just fling that stuff forward at will.
Poor long gone Faulkner is probably grinding what's left of his teeth. Hemingway — or what's left of him after the academic coffin-worms have chewed him and deplored how minty-fresh he didn't actually taste — is very likely super-dead-fuckin' jealous at the elegant, concise, abrupt perfect smix of Spanglish-AmSpan. And Kerouac, who, it must be said, if sadly, mournfully, dolorously, never even rode in a damn El Camino, would certainly get it, but not actually envy it, if only because he'd also have wanted to know what color it was too. Neal Cassady would've wanted to know what was under the hood.
I would hasten to remind him, and them,and other dabblers, other tip-tapping typers of aggregated language-hunks'n'chunks , that not every sentence can hold everything.
And only ever so few can be so ultra fine-ass.
1 comment:
I like the Kerouac Cassady references.
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