SHINGLES after TEN MONTHS

After more than ten months of shingles (the affliction started on Sept. 15, 2008), I continue to have pressure, itching and aching in the area above my left eye (the eyelid, the skin between the lid and brow, the eyebrow, and the forehead).
In rating the nastiness from a one to 10 (worst), I would say that my continuing problem is generally a 3 moving up to a 4 once in while. Every morning, I get up to itchiness, relieved somewhat by eye drops (Systane Ultra) which I apply twice day, per my ophthalmologist’s recommendation. Several times a day, I splash cold water on my eye for momentary relief and I find that taking a hot bath or shower relieves the symptoms somewhat.
Fatigue still hits me whenever I do any substantial work or exercise. I continue on a reduced exercise routine: stretches and 25 sit-ups in the morning, followed by a mile-and-a-half walk and tai chi. A few months ago, I tried to return to my full exercise program, which is much extensive than the one cited—and I became so exhausted barely made it home in the half-mile walk from my local park. I don’t do push-ups because of the discomfort I feel in the area around the eye.
Recently, my wife, Rae, got the anti-shingles vaccine (Zostavax) which was approved only three years ago by the FDA. With the vaccine, one has about 50-50 chance of avoiding shingles. For someone who has endured it for ten months—and faces months or years more, the 50-50 odds of escaping shingles seems like a worthwhile choice.

THE DANCER UPSTAIRS by Nicholas Shakespeare

Nicholas Shakespeare wrote THE DANCER UPSTAIRS twice—as an intriguing novel in 1995 and a screenplay that became a riveting film in 2002. I wish I could have read the screenplay, but I was unable to find a copy either for sale or free on the internet.
An aspiring screenwriter would do well to read the novel and then to watch the film. As good as the novel was, the film, directed by John Malkovich, was even better. In the transition from novel to film, Shakespeare trimmed away a few characters and did very little reshaping of the story. This is a study in how to translate a novel onto the screen without damaging the plot or central characters.
The seed of the story, of course, is the capture of Abimael Guzmán who led the brutal Shining Path revolutionaries in Peru. In the novel, the narrator is Dyer, an enterprising journalist, who stumbles across Agustín Rejas, the detective who tracked down President Ezequiel (based on Guzman), the mysterious leader of the murderous revolutionaries. Rejas’ story unfolds in a series of interviews with Dyer in a restaurant. Dyer and a few other minor characters are excised in the transition from novel to screenplay.
I have seen the film four times and read the novel only after my entrancement with THE DREAM DANCER in its movie form. I gave the novel and the film as a birthday present to my son, Ken, who is an aspiring screenwriter.

Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest

I was going through the ecstasy of eating half a Krainerwurst on a hot dog roll along with a nicely-chilled Stella Artois when I realized that I was the winner of the real sausage-eating contest: the one in my backyard, eating a single serving for pleasure (and lunch).
Every July 4th Nathan’s Famous holds a hot dog eating race in Cony Island in which the goal is to jam as many sausages and buns into the mouth and down the gullet as possible in 10 minutes. Just considering this display of gluttony has always made my stomach churn.
This year after hearing that Joey Chestnut, last year’s champion, topped his 2008 record of 59 hot dogs by downing 68 (note I say downing not eating or enjoying), I watched part of a video of the competition, I gagged and turned it off.
I have to admit I prefer Krainerwurst to hot dogs and I’m super-lucky to be able to shop for those delightful sausages at the Forest Pork Store in Huntington Station, NY. A Krainerwurst, for the uninitiated, is smoked bratwurst. Forest Pork makes its own Krainerwurst.
My approach to Krainerwurst is to slice it in half, the long way, to grill or fry for five minutes, and to eat each half on a hot dog roll without any other embellishments: no mustard, no sauerkraut, no onions, no relish, no ketchup. The reason: the Krainerwurst has a taste alone that brings joy to the palate.

THE MEMORY OF RUNNING

THE MEMORY OF RUNNING
by Ron McLarty
12.5 hours (Recorded Books)
While in the midst of the torture of shingles, I have found real pleasure in listening to books on CDs, in particular THE MEMORY OF RUNNING by Ron McLarty. This novel fits into the hero’s journey category, almost.
The protagonist is Smithson Ide, a simple, almost simple-minded 43-year-old man whose parents were killed in a car accident and who thereafter discovers his missing schizophrenic sister, Bethany, has died as a homeless person in LA. The girl next door, Norma, has loved Smithson from the age of 4 or 5. She was a cheery, wonderful kid, but four years younger than Smithson. As a result, he has never responded to her adoration and love.
In the opening of the novel, Smithson has become a drunk, an overeater of junk food, is 279 pounds, is unmarried, and is floating unhappily through life as a supervisor in a factory that makes GI Joe figures.
At the age of 10, Norma, the happy girl next door was hit by a truck or car and is doomed to spend the rest of her life in a wheel chair. Although she is bitter about her circumstances, she has created a career for herself as a draftsman working at home on architectural and artistic projects. Norma never relents in her pursuit of Smithson, loving him even though he has grown into a grossly-overweight loser and despite his continued indifference towards her.
Smithson sets out on a cross-country journey, a quest to collect his beloved sister’s body from a morgue/funeral home in Venice Beach, Calif. The trip, made possible in part by Norma, transforms Smithson from a slob into a real person.

THE JYNX sales

Over the course of a full year my novel, THE JYNX, has sold 13 copies in paperbacks and E-books. Certainly not a glorious sales report. Why hasn’t the book sold? Obscurity. Any book promoted widely, reviewed in magazines and newspapers, and distributed through local bookstores would sell thousands of copies. I know that from my experience with two nonfiction books sold through an agent and printed and distributed by two major publishers.
Let me whine for a moment. I had plans to promote THE JYNX, which is a well-written novel with a logical plot and interesting characters. What intervened was a devastating case of the shingles centered around my left eye. That plague began Sept. 15, 2008 when I was unable to use my left eye and totally fatigued for months. Nine months later, I still have lingering problems involving eye strain and fatigue, which prevent me from reading and writing with the intensity of my pre-shingles life. I am hoping that the shingles problem will fade in upcoming months.
I estimate from the available stats that my free online novel, THE DREAM DANCER, has been read by more than 1,000 persons over the past 21 months. THE DREAM DANCER is the best novel I have written. While that feeds into the substantially larger readership being free is probably the key factor. We all enjoy the freebies online.
I am planning to make THE JYNX a free online read with the hope that a larger audience could result in larger sales numbers. And, I am going to offer THE DREAM DANCER for sale as a paperback and E-book hoping to tap into the pool of those who have read it. Whenever I read a book I love, invariably I buy copies for friends and relatives.
So, we’ll see.

THE PRICE OF SALT

THE PRICE OF SALT
by Patricia Highsmith writing as Claire Morgan

The Naiad Press 1993 edition of THE PRICE OF SALT is worth reading just for the postscript by author Patricia Highsmith. The book was first published in 1951 under the pseudonym Claire Morgan.
In the postscript, Highsmith give us a rare insight into the seed that an author can grow into a marvelous novel. She was working during the Christmas rush in 1948 in the doll section of a New York department store when she was attracted to a sophisticated, elegantly-dressed female shopper. THE PRICE OF SALT was spun from that moment.
The book describes how Therese, the department store temp was drawn into a love affair with that chic woman, Carol. The difficulties of being lesbian lovers in 1940s America in an era when most men were appalled at the concept are filtered into the story. Carol comes out on the wrong side of a divorce as a result of her relationship with Therese. And, Therese discovers her own sexual preferences and an explanation of why she hasn’t been drawn to feel anything more than friendship for the men who are attracted to her.
Highsmith, who used a pen name on THE PRICE OF SALT to avoid being categorized as a lesbian writer, can be place in a box labeled ‘crime novelist’ for good reason. Her first novel was STRANGERS OF A TRAIN, which Alfred Hitchcock made into the notable film of the same name. Another of the readily-recognized films made from her work is THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY.
Obviously, Highsmith met a deep-seated need among readers with THE PRICE OF SALT since the 1952 paperback version of the book sold almost a million copies.

WE DID REMAIN

WE SHALL REMAIN, the title of the PBS American Experience five-part series on Native Americans, prompted in me the false assumption that the programs would deal with the survival of their cultures, languages and religions. I should have paid more careful attention to the words of the title: “shall” of course implies the future.
While so many Native Americans were pushed ever-westward onto dreary reservations, a number of nations, bands, or tribes—whatever they want to be called—somehow managed to remain as islands in the flood of white Europeans along the East Coast. If the American Experience had been about them, it would have been entitled WE DID REMAIN.
My best novel, THE DREAM DANCER, flows from the federal government’s decision to tear up a treaty between the United States and the Seneca Nation protecting their little piece of Northwestern Pennsylvania for the usual terms along the lines of “for as long as the grass grows and the water flows. That treaty was supposedly signed by George Washington in 1794.
Well, the grass must have stopped growing and the water flowing since the Army Corps of Engineers built a dam early in the 1960s that flooded the Seneca’s Allegany Reservation.
I became fascinated by the survival of the Iroquois culture and language and religion around 1960 when I wrote a series on the Onondaga Nation for the SYRACUSE HERALD-JOURNAL. The Onondaga and the Seneca are part of the Iroquois Confederation.
In the course of writing the series, I discovered the Queen Anne of England had sent three Silver communion sets early in the Eighteenth Century to the Onondaga, the Seneca, and the Mohawk, another Iroquois nation. The Mohawk and the Onondaga got their sets. No one was crazy enough to venture into the western wilderness to deliver the silver set to the Seneca. That set only got as far as Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan, where I believe it remains.
Around 1970, I ventured to the Kinzua Dam and had lunch with the then president of the Seneca Nation. I told him about Queen Anne’s undelivered gift, which was on display at Trinity Church. He said he would have the Seneca lawyers look into the situation. I heard from the lawyers. They were considering a law suit. A few months later, I went Trinity Church and the silver set was no longer on public view.
In 1971, I wrote a novel, KINZUA, which recounted a curse on the dam and centered on an Iroquois false face society, whose incantations cause the Kinzua Dam to crack. The rush of water swept away the remains of this great betrayal of a comparatively helpless band of Native Americans by the powerful United States government. KINZUA got me an agent, who spent a couple of years trying to pedal the novel. She never found a buyer, but I never forgot the novel.
Almost 35 years later, I decided to rewrite KINZUA. In the interim, I had developed as a writer. I discovered to my dismay that I didn’t care for the original story, concept or characters. Only the name Kinzua remained as the title for my computer folder as I set out to write what became THE DREAM DANCER. I created a new band of Native Americans called the Okwe, set them in a fictional valley in Pennsylvania, and created a special relationship between the Okwe and the Great Spirit.
My agent refused to represent me on the latest version of the novel so I spent months looking for another agent to no avail. Several said they liked the book, but didn’t think it would fly in today’s market. So I put it on the internet as a free novel. You can read it at http://www.kennethccrowe.com/.
To give you an idea of what the book is about, I said in my letter to my agent in 2005: “THE DREAM DANCER is a Twentieth Century Native American fable. Coop Rever, the protagonist, is a reluctant messenger of God. He is a Native American, a war hero, a lover, a foreign correspondent, an author, a prophet, a murderer and a convict.”
And I said in a summary telling potential readers about THE DREAM DANCER:
“The story opens in Paris in the dwindling days of the summer of 1956. Coop Rever, a Native American expatriate who is the protagonist of THE DREAM DANCER, is getting ready to travel to Algeria to gather material for his third book on the French Foreign Legion. Coop is a war correspondent and author, educated at the Sorbonne under the World War II GI Bill.
“Coop is a member of the Okwe, a tiny band of Indians who have been left in relative peace in their narrow river valley in Pennsylvania for almost 200 years because of a treaty signed by George Washington that shielded their land from white predators for as long as the water flowed over the Green River Falls. The Okwe assumed that would be forever.
“One hot August day in 1956, the water stopped falling, an incident seized upon by the local congressman, Arthur Kings, to declare the treaty moot. Kings has devised a plan for the construction of a dam that would flood the valley—fulfilling a long-held dream of his family to drive the Okwe from their land.”

The next novel I will review is THE PRICE OF SALT by Patricia Highsmith writing as Claire Morgan