Saturday, March 14, 2015

The House on Rock Harbor Road -- February 8 and 9, 1963 - Final Entries


The last two entries in my father's House on Rock Harbor Road journal trace a cold but not unusual winter on the Cape. My father is back in his nature/environment mindset with poetic musings on the cold and snowy winter. He ends talking for the first time about a novel he was writing and how humor pieces aren't very funny at the moment because of the recent "Cuban situation." Also, a critique of Thurber.

So this is it. What next? Where to go? I started the blog, honestly, because at the time (and no doubt, still) a writer going public with his/her work needed an online platform. I started Unreliable Narrator long before Beyond the Margins happened. When BTM started up, I moved my writing about writing, reading, and publishing there. Back here I experimented with movie reviews for a year. Since then it's been mostly intermittent entries from my father's work. I will keep UN going in some capacity. There is more Wendell writing, but I'm not sure my blog is the place for it. Maybe so. Or possibly my Dad's writing is meant to stay where it is--scribbled on legal pads, typed on stacks of white paper, scrawled on yellowed and delicate parchment, and as clipped and saved articles from long gone magazines and newspapers. We'll see.

 


Sunday, March 1, 2015

The House on Rock Harbor Road -- February 6 and 7, 1963

We move into 1963 and Wendell discusses book buying and admits he has a problem (the first step to kicking the habit). Also, we get an inside glimpse into his publishing short and humorous pieces. What makes a piece funny and what magazines (in the early '60s) were looking for.

The pastel above is a Wendell original, hanging in my condo. Not sure what year he did it, but it was one of his later works.

[To enlarge each image below for a better reading experience, right click and select Open Link in new window. In the new window, click the image to make larger or smaller.]