WHOA! SLOW DOWN!

Things are going to slow down a bit blogwise around here. First, because now that “Bronze Inside and Out” is beginning to hit the bookshelves (already there in Canada -- another two weeks in the US), there are inquiries and side-deals to think about. People are re-aligning their relationship to me, depending on what they think of the book itself or what they figure will change in their world because of it. Should they kiss up or kiss off? Or do they need to do a bit of research: see if I remember them, figure out if I’m still mad at them (they usually know why), ask if it changes how I feel about them now that I’m a “famous author.” I don’t necessarily mean on a national basis! I mean, a poster about me speaking at the library next week went up in the post office this morning and it has changed the way some local people act already.

My cousins insist on the idea that “being published” by someone respectable like the University of Calgary Press is a great event that should make my life from here on worthwhile and respectable. My Lulu.com books mean nothing to them. Only one reads my blog. The great plot event is “being published” which means to them that I’m stamped as super-intelligent, since they don’t know that lots of super-intelligent people can’t write worth beans and some rather below the 100 IQ mark are dynamic and much-treasured writers. Yet they’re readers -- they read all the time, novels mostly. They’re pretty Jane Austeny.

In Manhattan right now there is a hustle about the “best books” of the year, just like the best movies and best actors at the Oscars. The initiated know that movie prizes are awarded by a process more webbed than any spider could manage, compounded by what other movies were released, how old the actor might be, whether they were unjustly passed over ten years ago, and so on. But it is frank and open that these awards are by movie people for movie people. The most interesting ones are probably the “craft” awards about lighting, sets, costumes, and all that great stuff you aren’t really supposed to notice while watching the movie.

There is a certain set of publishers who look for and solicit certain kinds of writing -- either smart political stuff or novels of a kind, often international these days, maybe confessional from the lower classes -- and then promote it to a set of people they believe they know about. Educated, Eastern, dressed a certain way, drinkers of certain beverages -- in case they don’t have a clue there are lists in magazines like Vanity Fair to tip them off so they won’t be stupid consumers of wristwatches or shampoo. People make fun of them and they make fun of each other, but in the end they are a tribe. Maybe a bit cross-Atlantic. No consciousness at all of any kind of life outside of that bent-back-on-itself context.

My book will never touch them. On the other hand, those who feel they are entitled to this book, say, Western art aficionadoes esp. in Montana, will find that they don’t quite find what they want in it (how much Scriver bronzes are worth) and more than they can quite assimilate (Beaux Arts equestrian monuments back east). The old girl friends, related or not, are going to be equally disappointed by what’s in and what’s out. A lot of people will say it’s too much about me, the author. And the same people as usual will cry incredulously, “But he’s not that FAMOUS!!!” Their point of reference will be Charlie Russell, who ranks as an obsession -- his actual personhood long since trampled.

But that’s not entirely what will be taking up my time. There are family matters to address and some have registered fears that I might blog about them. Clearly there is a deep concern for what they call “privacy,” and how people “deserve” it. I disagree, but there is a level at which blogging about someone or something begins to interfere with it, to change the terms of what’s going on. That raises moral stakes pretty high. I’ve already blurted out a few things (not about relatives) that I should not have, not that those involved didn’t deserve it. I doubt it affected their lives.

More than that, I have a lot to think about as I come close to seventy: how to spend the next ten years. So far, publishing a book is much less than I thought it would be. It will not get me out of debt. How much should I strip down my housekeeping? How much should I defend my monastic existence? Which books should I tackle next? The fiction in hopes of maybe attracting a bit of notice from the Montana simulation of Manhattan? Do I care? Or should I take on some of the things to which I am initiated and that people don’t even know there is anything to know about -- but that might matter to people a century from now. An interesting split is developing between the people who were around fifty years ago, but don’t understand computers and so never pick up information from blogs or databases, and new players who can search the Internet far and wide but never know what it was like on the rez in the Sixties.

Part of this reflection is prompted by reading “Indians, Cowboys and Western Art: A History of MONAC,” by Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J., wily old Jesuit who has gone to his reward -- or whatever. MONAC was the Museum of North American Culture built next to Gonzaga. It rose, largely entangled with the Flathead Valley Art Mafia, and fell. Cheney-Cowles tried to blackball them in the beginning and Cheney-Cowles ended up with their art and artifacts. “Schonie,” as he insists he was called affectionately, uses the book (which was self-published, printed by Thomas Printing in Kalispell, MT) to canonize those he loves (Gary Schildt!) or wants something from and to pour scorn on everyone who ever resisted or criticized him. You will not find Bob Scriver anywhere in the book -- at least I’m halfway through without his name being mentioned and he’s not in the index. I didn’t expect that he would be.

The trouble with writing something, whether it’s a book or a blog, is that it generally reveals a lot of connections and insights that the writer had no idea were being recorded, for good or for ill. Of course, readers are also apt to see ghosts from their own minds projected into what they read. I may need to take more daily walks to clear my head. On the other hand, it will be fun to report what I can as this unfolds -- excluding anything impinging on the privacy of innocents. Those that there are.