Learning To Walk In The Dark - an enlightening book to read

Taylor

WATKINS GLEN, New York - Barbara Brown Taylor's Learning To Walk In The Dark is much more an exploration of the human soul - and faith - than the clever title might imply.

But, really, there's plenty of walking in the dark, too - even a short bit on moon gardens.

One of Taylor's main point is about how we are taught to fear the dark - and anything that is dark - from childhood.

As I was reading the book over the past few days, I kept remembering that scene from the movie Poltergeist and the eerie voice of the medium saying, "Go into the light!"

That iconic phrase has become so much a part of our cultural lexicon, that you can almost guarantee that some wag will offer it anytime someone is having a tough time walking at night, stumbling because there isn't enough light to see.

Taylor is an accomplished writer and one-time Episcopal priest. She asks enough questions of the reader that the book sometimes causes you to pull up short.

You have to think about what she's has just said and test it against your own beliefs before moving on. In the newspaper business, we used to call that kind of writing a thumbsucker.

I read a review of the book the New York Times Review of Books, a testimony of the power of that publication to push people to read particular volumes. That said, I picked up the copy I just read at the Watkins Glen Public Library where it will return to the new-book shelves next week.

Don't choose Learning To Walk In The Dark as a summer-reading, lightweight book. But if you want to peek into the darkness - which is not frightening at all, she convinced me - take your time working through it.

'Fracking Justice' section titled 'Sedition' nearing completion

WATKINS GLEN, New York - The fourth of five sections of the sequel to The Fracking War has about a week's worth of writing left to do. At least it seems that way on a rainy upstate New York afternoon.

The section of Fracking Justice under construction is called simply 'Sedition'. And it's pretty damned seditious.

What's slowing progress is that the section has a chapter in need of a major rewrite. Then there are five more chapters that need to be added to close it out.

Still, it's surging ahead. And as in the drafting of The Fracking War, it's hard to keep ahead of the bizarre hydrofracking/gas industry news.

Just think about the bills working their way through Congress right now to make gas exports much more easier. Or how in upstate New York, propane companies are blaming last winter's fuel shortages on a lack of storage, when we know it was mostly the results of export to other nations.

Next thing you know, the natural gas and oil industry will be exempted from most federal clean air and clean water laws.

Oh. Sorry. They already are.

 

'Fracking Justice' finally gets back into the queue

WATKINS GLEN, New York - After cleaning my office this past week and doing everything possible to avoid getting back to working on the draft of Fracking Justice (the sequel to The Fracking War), I ran across the cartoon at the right on Facebook today.

How could I not dive back into Fracking Justice after seeing that?

For the record, writers are generally not all that self-confident about their writing. If they do exude self-confidence, it's usually an act.

That said, after rereading the first section of Fracking Justice, I'm self-confident enough (or just acting) to say that it will be done sometime this summer. Reading just the first part of the book (of five sections) makes me wonder if I should title it Fracking Injustice.

For the novel writers and would-be novel writers reading this, I have a warning about writing a sequel: It's freakin' hard.

Why?

Just as in writing a news article, you cannot assume that a reader has read the previous book. So all that hard character development has to be recreated. Then, of course, there has to be some new characters created, a few old ones made to disappear, and entire fictional communities made whole again.

Like I said, freakin' hard.

But in the end, justice will be served, hot and cold. Fracking Justice, that is.