Skip to content

Ordinary Times

A place of politics, culture, and discourse

Primary Menu
  • Log-in
  • Welcome!
    • Masthead
    • Inquiries
    • Guest Posting Policy
    • About Feature Images
  • Community
    • Commentareum
    • State of the Discussion (beta)
    • Commenting Policy
    • The 500kth Ordinary Comment
    • The 750kth Ordinary Comment
  • Follow Us
    • On Facebook
    • On Twitter
    • Entries RSS
    • Comments RSS
  • Friends
    • Arc Digital
    • Outside the Beltway
    • Splice Today
    • Elections Daily
    • Liberal Currents
    • The Bulwark
    • Conservative Pathways
    • Misfits Politics
    • American Creation
  • Blog Archives
    • Blinded Trials
    • Mindless Diversions
    • Bookclubs!
    • Not a Potted Plant
    • Dutch Courage
    • Journeys in Alterity
    • The 49th
    • Jubilee
    • Safe Depository
  • Home
  • 2019
  • April
  • 11
  • Hey, wanna read something?

Hey, wanna read something?

Anybody want to read a manuscript-in-progress? Wait! Don't run away just yet!
Rufus F. April 11, 2019

Anybody want to read a manuscript-in-progress? Wait! Wait! Don’t run away just yet!

A few years ago, I wrote a book about my great-grandfather, the Paris correspondent for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle from 1918 to 1933, and manager of the “Paris Bureau” frequented by people like Henry Miller and Ernest Hemingway and Ezra Pound and thousands of tourists and vagabonds from Brooklyn. He’s probably best remembered, if at all, for his friendship with Hemingway during the time when the writer was scribbling away at short stories and The Sun Also Rises. His newspaper articles are still available from the Brooklyn Public Library and I used those and his correspondence with Hemingway to write what I thought of as an entertaining popular history, or as I called it “the biography of a footnote.”

I then made what was, admittedly, a piss poor effort to “pitch” the book to literary agents. I think it was number ten who read it, said that it was an interesting story and I’m a good writer, but he wasn’t really connecting with it, so would have to pass. The truth was that I wasn’t connecting with it either and I couldn’t figure out why. Surely, it is an interesting story- the American journalists in Paris in the 20s were hard-drinking, adventurous, lively, somewhat cracked, pranksters. And they were there for everything important in the twentieth-century. But, still, something was missing.

So, I put it aside and rewrote my dissertation into a book of its own, entitled “Voyages of the Self: How the French Romantics Pioneered Modern Tourism and Identity”. That one reads much more like a story now. That one’s pretty much tight as a drum. In October, I came painfully close to selling that one to a highly esteemed academic publisher before it fell through. So close, in fact, that I’d rather not talk about it at the moment.

But, in the interim, I realized what was missing in the first book. I had been focusing on my great-grandfather and Hemingway because, really, how would it be for a working writer to have a good friend in the “writer’s colony” of Paris who he watched develop into the Hemingway of those first books? That seemed like the core of the story: two writer buddies writing. At least, it interested me!

I think if you asked my great-grandfather, however, he would have said the core of his life was the relationship with his wife, which survived the tumult of Jazz Age Paris, the Depression, poverty, plenty, and their own personality crises. Not to mention, she also wrote and managed the Paris Bureau alongside him! So, I dove into their letters to one another, which they passed on to their children, and found a pretty fascinating love story. And I started rewriting from there.

Now, I’m in the process of Draft Two- always a vastly-different beast from the first draft. It has a lot more of her in it, and more of me in it, and I think it’s popping now. I won’t claim it’s the great American biography, but it is popping. The chapters are shorter, a lot of the fat is gone, and I think it’s humming along this time.

So, now, what I’m really talking about is putting up the chapters one at a time on a “top secret” website and letting people read them and offer feedback as I go. I’m through about five chapters, but could post one a week.

If you’d be interested in reading along with it and offering mild feedback, send me an email at rufus138@gmail.com and I’ll send you the password and link.

Continue Reading

Previous: Songs of Springtime and Rebirth
Next: Weekend: Reclamation Of Time Stolen

Related Stories

The Emergency Ordinary Times Facelift

Will Truman April 12, 2025 11
Kitty

System Maintenance at Midnight EST (Update: Again Tonight)

Will Truman February 20, 2019

We Are Experiencing Some Technical Difficulties

Will Truman January 11, 2019 13

Recent Comments

  • Saul Degraw on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025The New York Times will have us know that the Qatar’s illegal and unconstitutional bribe of a 400 mi…
  • David TC in reply to Dark Matter on Gender Critical: Legally Defining SexThat’s your spin on their spin on an amendment that won’t pass. NOW is one of the strongest supporte…
  • Jaybird in reply to LeeEsq on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025The right has plenty of anti-Semitism of it’s own that it hides up. They force universities to deal…
  • Saul Degraw on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/elizabeth-holmes-partner-brazen-business-20321733.php Theranos 2…
  • LeeEsq in reply to Dark Matter on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025The right has plenty of anti-Semitism of it's own that it hides up. They force universities to deal…
  • Saul Degraw on From New York Magazine’s Intelligencer: Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through CollegeI suppose the solution is to go back to blue book exams.
  • CJColucci in reply to DensityDuck on From New York Magazine’s Intelligencer: Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College"Some" is not quite right, but otherwise that's accurate.
  • Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025I'm not entirely sure that you want to mix the whole "antisemitism" thing with the "antiapartheid" t…
  • Dark Matter in reply to LeeEsq on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025The right and the left can’t make any positive arguments... The Right wants to support Israel to pre…
  • Saul Degraw in reply to DensityDuck on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025In this case I am referring to Elon but thanks for trolling. “Never believe that anti-Semites are co…

Devcat Reports

Devcat image

Problems persist. We appreciate your patience.

More Comments

  • Jaybird in reply to DensityDuck on From New York Magazine’s Intelligencer: Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College
  • DensityDuck in reply to David TC on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025
  • DensityDuck in reply to Saul Degraw on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025
  • DensityDuck in reply to David TC on From New York Magazine’s Intelligencer: Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College
  • Saul Degraw on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025
  • Jaybird in reply to LeeEsq on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025
  • LeeEsq on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025
  • David TC in reply to David TC on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025
  • David TC on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025
  • David TC in reply to DensityDuck on From New York Magazine’s Intelligencer: Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College
  • David TC on United States and China Agree to 90 Day Tariff Reprieve
  • North in reply to DensityDuck on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025
  • DensityDuck in reply to Jaybird on From New York Magazine’s Intelligencer: Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College
  • DensityDuck in reply to Jaybird on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025
  • Jaybird in reply to DensityDuck on From New York Magazine’s Intelligencer: Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College
April 2019
S M T W T F S
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
282930  
« Mar   May »

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

You may have missed

word

Somebody is Always Taking the Joy out of Life

Clare Briggs May 12, 2025
dreamerphone

Danny Dreamer and those Newfangled Speaking Telegraph Machines

Clare Briggs May 10, 2025
Death Roads Tournament

Saturday Morning Gaming: Death Roads Tournament

Jaybird May 10, 2025
2025-05-09 TDoRS C5134 (05.18.13)

The End of the Bonfire

Clare Briggs May 9, 2025

Recent Comments

  • Saul Degraw on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025
  • David TC in reply to Dark Matter on Gender Critical: Legally Defining Sex

Recent Comments

  • Saul Degraw on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025
  • David TC in reply to Dark Matter on Gender Critical: Legally Defining Sex
  • Jaybird in reply to LeeEsq on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025
  • Saul Degraw on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025
  • LeeEsq in reply to Dark Matter on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025

Ordinary Twitter

Tweets by Ordinarians

Recent Comments

  • Jaybird in reply to LeeEsq on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025
  • LeeEsq on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025
  • David TC in reply to David TC on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025
  • David TC on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025
  • David TC in reply to DensityDuck on From New York Magazine’s Intelligencer: Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College
  • David TC on United States and China Agree to 90 Day Tariff Reprieve
  • North in reply to DensityDuck on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025
  • DensityDuck in reply to Jaybird on From New York Magazine’s Intelligencer: Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College
  • DensityDuck in reply to Jaybird on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025
  • Jaybird in reply to DensityDuck on From New York Magazine’s Intelligencer: Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College
  • North in reply to InMD on United States and China Agree to 90 Day Tariff Reprieve
  • DensityDuck on From New York Magazine’s Intelligencer: Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College
  • Jaybird on Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025
  • DensityDuck in reply to David TC on From New York Magazine’s Intelligencer: Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College
  • DensityDuck in reply to Jaybird on From New York Magazine’s Intelligencer: Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College
Copyright © All rights reserved. | MoreNews by AF themes.