Undaunted Courage--Stephen Ambrose

I pondered briefly giving this 4 stars, rather than 5, because of how long it took me to get through it.  But then I realized it took so long because of its amazing thoroughness.  Every single thing--every mile of the trip, every nuance of the time, every Native tribe they encountered, every possible outlook of every important decision that Lewis and Clark (and Thomas Jefferson) made--was given quick but thorough room in this book.  I understand the time, and Thomas Jefferson, better than I had before.  It is a brilliant book of a different time, an era that we will never revisit.  It is a miracle that every man but one of the Corps of Discovery returned from this three-year adventure.

The last few pages are a vastly different chronicle of a man who was perhaps the victim of Thomas Jefferson's biggest political mistake--the appointment of Meriwether Lewis as Governor of the Louisiana Territory, a position for which Lewis was horrifically, and very obviously, unsuited.  He would have been better off sent on another expedition, or given a job at the famous Philadelphia museums of the time, chronicling his discoveries and getting his journals published.  It took him over a year to even get to Louisiana after he was appointed Governor of the Territory.  He went insane there--instances of emotional and mental imbalances occurred throughout his life, but seemed to oddly disappear while exploring the Territory.  Possibly he had advanced malaria.  Medications he took for that may have reacted badly with the alcohol and other drugs he heavily consumed.  He seemed rather like Poe when he drank--some sort of reaction besides basic drunkenness apparently occurred.  Then he committed suicide in bizarre fashion, just a couple of years after his return from the expedition--with the journals still on him.  One of the greatest mysteries of the time is why this man, who was willing to give his life for the journals while in the Territory, and who was desperate for money after his return, never really even tried to have his journals published.  The publication would have brought him even more riches and fame than he had received upon his return.

A mystery of a very mysterious man.  And so the book is heavily recommended, but beware that it is a breathtakingly thorough work that will take some time to get through.  It will be well worth it.

Two Books and A Rejection

A few quick things about what I'm reading:

Undaunted Courage

It is amazing what these guys could do in the outdoors.  Make cabins, make canoes, hike thousands of miles, ride the rapids, cross the Rocky Mountains and the Bitterroot Mountains, make peace with the Native Americans they found, document every new species of animal and plant, coordinate their location by the stars, write all this in their journals, kill all their food, skin and cook all their food, cure the sick and injured--and face their fears of the unknown.  All of this, for years.  Away from their families and friends.  Despite all this, Meriwether Lewis, after conquering all of these obstacles, after camping on the Pacific, took a look at his life and didn't like what he saw.  Said he hadn't accomplished enough, done enough for the general good.  Considered himself a failure.  (Stephen Ambrose, the dedicated author, concludes that Lewis had been a manic-depressive.)  I cannot imagine this; I'm proud of myself when I walk a few blocks with my greyhound.  There probably aren't a hundred people in the country today who could do what Lewis and Clark and their men did.  I'm almost 300 pages in.

Drood

Author Dan Simmons has created an already-moody (after just 30 pages) telling of the last few years of Charles Dickens' life, as told to us in an unpublished document penned by contemporary author (and still known amongst English majors) Wilkie Collins.  Very atmospheric, and shockingly good writing.  A very memorable scene in the beginning: It's well-known that Dickens was in a train wreck five years or so before he died, and that his much-younger mistress and her mother--and not his wife--were with him on the train.  He got out of the carnage mostly unscathed--although headaches, backaches, and what we know now are PTSD-related symptoms dogged him the rest of his life--but the people he saw and tended to would remain with him, buried undead in his psyche, until he died.  The description of these people, and their severed arms, sliced-open heads, fractured skulls--and the mysterious Drood (who could've whispered his name as "Dread"), who was but a shadow with a long black cape, two slits in a skull that passed as his nose, and razor-sharp little teeth--was extremely well-done and clearly in my head as I type this.  It is this writing, this atmosphere, and this narrative sophistication that helped this novel sell well and become Dan Simmons' breakout work.  (Though his previous, The Terror, also garnered great reviews.)

I recommend both of these books highly.  I usually read one non-fiction and one fiction work at the same time.  You're not always in the mood to read just one type all the time, right?

Upon my research today, I came upon these two tidbits from two separate agents' websites:

--Query with SASE...No snail mail.
--Prefers to read material exclusively...Only responds if interested.

And I received the shortest rejection ever just under an hour ago: "Not for me--thanks anyway."

Writerly Things

Happy New Year, everyone!

Today I'm taking it easy.  Doing writerly things like: reading (over 150 pages into Undaunted Courage--a semi-biography of Meriwether Lewis and a history of that era and the Louisiana Purchase--that my better half's mother was nice enough to get me for Christmas), organizing the office (I've decided that I'm going to keep only the books and research materials I need to write the novels and stories I'm working on right now, and store every other book away), sending out three short stories that were finished awhile ago (including one that takes place on Christmas and Christmas Eve--guess I missed the boat on that one), and--oh, yeah--writing!!!

May we all have great writing and even better contracts this year!!!  I leave you with a really good quote I stumbled across recently, applicable to all writers and other artists:

"The truly creative mind, in any field, is no more than this: a human born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. To him, a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create-so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency, he is not really alive unless he is creating."

-Pearl S. Buck