Back Into the Earth

Tim Barrus, the New York Times

BINOCULARS

all, all/ my books/// have been burned here and there, ripped to shreds, blacklisted, by people on my front porch armed with forks and spoons/ editors get off on sticking it up my ass, well how am i to keep you down/ play it the way feel it/ i get…

Tim Barrus: New York Times

Great travelers. The great travelers on the happy planet do not include themselves as victims in all the looking back at where they have been. I’m autistic, and really cannot make sense out of how political parties came to be regarded as the tails that wag the dragon. I’m so…

What Book Is It Like

I am now used to the questions (plural) about what book is the book I am writing now like. The question is, I guess, inevitable. I smile and nod. Gravity’s Rainbow. But anyone born after 1987 will not have read it. Or they’ve read it but they are all in…

It Is All A Blur

The wild waters of this roar are made in the fortitude of salt. Just salt. Miles and miles of salt. Mountains of salt. And the bones that fell there. – Tim Barrus

CPR

I would not be worth – all of this – high action traction where the arch of the story itself could explode from pure adrenaline. That tone from word one to the end, lightem up, up, up. Litem up, up, up. I am glad people can coordinate and go for…

Appalachia Kicks

I live in Appalachia. Supposedly, this, too, is North Carolina. I live here because it’s cheap. Economics is the great leveler. I eat what I can grow. Why is that supposed to be a humiliation. This is the land of No One Makes Much Around Here Anyway. We are not…

porch

He sang songs in this rocker. And he forgot his hat.

What Are We Sure Of

The end of democracy. The end of class and caste. A chicken for every pot. If we could all just work together. For togetherness. The end of patriarchy. The end of the hierarchal pyramid that protects the American paradigm that does not work. All of the cultural institutions like education,…

Writers Should Plan Their Escape Now

If I was a journalist who wrote this, I would look for a quiet place where I might hide from the Night of the Long Knives. The Night of the Brown Shirts. The Night of the Executions. The Night of the Long March. The Night of Old Suitcases. The Night…

Tim Barrus: New York Times

Is Maureen Dowd Irish.

Michigan Was Not a Life

I am autistic. I have wondered and wondered. I lived on the wrong side of the river. Rusted ugly town of rusted ugly people. There was no blue sky. The coal cars stunk like corpses and the sulphurized-yellow clouds that drifted through our homes and lives, and as it lifted…

Tim Barrus: The Predator Among Us

That greater darkness creeps receptive fatigue and that is where the lost are living. Denial is a weary mistress. Mistress takes no prisoners. Denial is impetuous. Americans live in a dreamy sleep even as the night has ended, where is the light. There is no light. We are the comatose.…

Tim Barrus: Jared Leto

I would not have minded if the book critic had taken issue with my work. But no. They always go after me as a human being. I am, of course, the monster, the criminal, the itinerant, the Boogeyman, Coyote. I will gladly take Coyote. The coyotes around my cabin eat…

Book Publishing Has Always Been a Train Wreck

For Pam Paul at the New York Times: Publishing lives and dies by the blacklist. The blacklist decides. Not the editor. Not the PR guys. Not the publisher. It simply shows it’s not about what you write. It’s about the writer. Why did you write this. How many children do…

Tim Barrus: Minority Rule is Usually Ruthless

We are ruled by ruthless masters. They are called the aristocracy. They are unfit to rule anything.   https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/21/opinion/minority-rule-majoritarian-democracy.html?campaign_id=0&emc=edit_cr_20221021&instance_id=0&nl=comments-notifications&regi_id=56243886&segment_id=0&user_id=acf7e0fa0ccfaa274c5a8c73c0976c4a#commentsContainer&permid=121057070:121057070

Tim Barrus, New York Times

The relationship of patriarchy to republican authoritarianism is one we need to study like what the fuck is this. What rock did this snake crawl out from under. Republicans should commit suicide. I do not like to slice the head off with a shovel because snakes eat mice. Don’t even…

Tim Barrus, New York Times

I hear they go naked under the robes. It’s fun to poke them because it robs them of their ritualized validity. Satire is protected speech. Since this is not the New York Times, I can say that they have no authority and even less moral authority. Make me pay this…

Tim Barrus, New York Times

Tim Barrus, New York Times

I can hear them grit their teeth at the New York Times. Turn on the AI, Zelda. It’s coming for all of you.

Tim Barrus, New York Times

I do not mean to single out another writer. It’s not her fault that publishing deals fundamentally with not just a blacklist, but a set of blacklists that work like flawless machinery that could separate the good from the bad and the bad from the bad and the good from…

Tim Barrus, New York Times

On any given day, I am apt to see everything from bears to coyotes. The mountain is an awesome thing.

Tim Barrus, New York Times

Tim Barrus, New York Times

Publications who produce this kind of landed gentry pornography, are dealing with the materials of selling history as something you can wrap around you. The hush hush secret to this castle are the dragons in the back.  

Tim Barrus, New York Times

Entire packs of wolves behave exactly like humans posing for position. It’s fundamentally all about power, but women have to work harder at it, and for less. Don’t ask me to paint any kind of picture as to who and what Homo sapiens means. The jury remains in session until…