Thank you very much for your interest in my writing. In 1999, Michael Korda picked up Stacking in Rivertown for Simon & Schuster. I thought I'd broken through the wall and from then on, it would be easier to get published. Yeah, was I wrong! For all sorts of reasons, fiction is much harder to sell. Publishers of all kinds have slashed the amount of hardcopy they produce. Yet I felt a great connection with those of you that read Stacking and appreciated the energies of that crazy ride. So I wanted to respond to your generosity of reading my work by giving you Line of Battle to read.
And so - the "DONATE" button. If I could, I would post Line of Battle for free without any mention of money. I know that many people think that music and writing and art should be free. And that's a great dream. But there are those of us out here trying to do something difficult and need funds to get by. We're trying to circumvent large corporations and Boards of Directors and connect directly with those individuals who want something more out of writing, music, or film - or any number of artistic mediums that run beneath the radar.
I hope you find Line of Battle to be something special. And if you'd take a moment to drop some money in the jar, I'd appreciate it. You can use a credit card, paypal, or if you'd like to send a check, shoot me an e-mail. When you're done reading, I'd love to hear your comments. And don't forget to check out other free works on this site - some poetry and maybe a song or short story every now and then then once I get the hang of building a website.
Happy reading! And thank you again for your generosity time and effort to read my work.
Barbara Bell
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"at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement,
especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so
enormously . . . I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is
capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any
irritable reaching after fact and reason. . .or rather obliterates all
consideration." John Keats (21 Dec. 1817)
Ending one novel and beginning another is wrenching. In 2003 I'd just finished a novel called Gravity Rules
that has never been published. So I needed to write something to
transition me away from Gravity (no pun intended). I found myself
extremely upset with policies of the Bush administration - legalization
of torture and preemptive war. So I began a short story. Yet within the
first few pages of what was to become Line of Battle, the story exploded and I knew I'd accidentally hit pay dirt.
In 1944, William Faulkner wrote to Malcolm Cowley, "I'm telling the
same story over and over which is myself and the world. That's all a
writer ever does, he tells his own biography in a thousand different
terms."
We can only know our own experience. As Mars says in Line of Battle - We are a converting influence that patterns our view of the world. In this way, Line of Battle is the same story as Stacking in Rivertown. But the similarities end there. The voice of Line of Battle is a world away from Becca's voice in Stacking. Stacking wrote itself in about 8 weeks at the beginning of a long, harrowing manic episode. The unbridled, manic energies that created Stacking are clear. Line of Battle
has none of that. Though an underlying urgency speaks to having
re-lived deep psychic desperation through the agency of creating Line of Battle.
For
me, the most important goal of writing is to move outside of our ideas
of life and into a moment of pure Being. What does this mean? What does
it mean when Keats writes "obliterates all consideration?"
I want to be swallowed by the whale and if I happen to get belched up
on land, I want to know I've been eaten. I want to be jettisoned out of
ingrained cognitive patterns and into something unknowable and
unsayable. Language will not bring us to those places because language as a mechanism interferes with it. Our brains get stuck in ruts.
So how can I use language as a way to destroy language? I think Keats
means "obliterates the thinking mind." In other words, to move beyond
an idea of a thing to the thing itself. So the goal becomes using
language, not as a rational system for communication, but as a way to
provoke immersion in the primal energies of the physique and cataclysm
in the mind.
While reading Virginia Woolf, I discovered her use of rhythm, the meter
of the sentencing, the phrasing, and the use of recurring imagery. She
uses it to induce in readers that are susceptible, a hypnosis of sorts.
This hypnosis creates the space in which the brain becomes permeable to
metaphoric imagery and/or poetic juxtaposition. The thin fabric of
illusion is ripped away. One can be thrust into a state not unlike
moments of revelation, or 'radiance' as Joseph Campbell might say.
That is what I hoped to accomplish in Line of Battle.
On the surface, this novel is a spy thriller. And it can convey a moral
position against the use of torture. However, in order to gain the full
benefit of Line of Battle, a
reader must learn the rhythm of the language and enter the stream. It
will greatly improve your experience of the text. I see the book as an
attempt to create a passageway toward illumination, a state of being
readily accessible in the aftermath of brutality and torment.
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Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments can be like Academy Awards, a person can go on too
long. But then I always hate to disappoint. So many, many thanks to
Barbara Shoup for helping me in so many ways that I am in debt up to
the eyeballs. Jenna Behm, Barbara Nitke, Marsha McCreadie, Diane
Senior, and Anna Lorentzon were great readers of later drafts. Thanks to Brent Scott for our discussions of torture. Leslie DiRusso was a great help, loaning me out-of-print and rare books on the Nepalese Himalayan tribes, and thanks to Literary Writers Group for trying very hard to place Line of Battle with a publisher.
I am in debt to Carolyn Hardy for introducing me to "To the
Lighthouse" from which I have never recovered, my delerium hangs on. I
will always be indebted to Betsy Gillum, Isaac Jimenez, and my brother
Jeff for simply Being. And of course Sarah - for all the trouble we've
caused one another in our long journey together, walking farther and
farther, and having learned there is no going back.
We hiked blue sky
Snow pack, Queen's crown
We hiked miserable
Bowed to the throat with loads
Of Penstemon
Of pendant Waterbells.
With you, lover of tomorrow
In the day of small hurts
Of bedsores,
And one deep wound.
Healing comes like a stalker.
Preyed on by health,
We scale high passes
Where elk feed on Monks Hood.
Before wholeness brought us
To this damp disease
We hiked as though visitors.
Of our hike we can only say
The end complains over beginnings
And we are pained
And we devour blue sky
Our vocation in this long-promised love
Of small hurts.
And one deep wound.
7/27/01
