Blue Ridge Baby

Blue Ridge Baby, a novel by Tim Barrus

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There Were No Roads Tim Barrus

Icon

Iconography is the Jack Russell chasing its crazy tail. Stripped down to what is important but probably not to the dog. To the dog, you either feed it or you don’t. Icons seek an audience. A holiness beaten bitter by its complete failure to find a god. Anywhere. Anywhere.

Autism

I just can’t belong to the autistic tribe. And they don’t want me, anyway. You can’t keep all the hurtful stuff at arm’s length and that is expressed in compelling ways, I was diagnosed with autism at age 6 by school psychologists. Why. Because I was reading. Especially Marx, physics,…

Tim Barrus: Spoons

People ask me why I am doing this one. This book of Getting Out of Dodge. Dirt Bike Town. People have been all over my ass about writing that looks at the deep sense of loss in Appalachia. I’m not doing poverty porn. That would be easy. Right now, I’m…

Tim Barrus, Publishing and Me

I just sent this to a literary agency. Because I love publishing. Actually, I love books. I owe you an apology. I’m on Facebook, but I never see it. I don’t want to see it. So I saw this agency on Twitter. Apparently on Facebook, if you hit return the…

ROUGH DRAFTS FROM A CHEAP HOTEL

The Gilbert is around the corner from the Wilshire Country Club. I stay at the Gilbert when I have to. Although I hate Los Angeles. This place with it’s fetish for concrete soaks up the sun, and the starring performance is a radiant heat that pulsates inside your eyes. I…

Fucking Dragons

So it begins again. A pack of wolves numbering in the thousands, went on a rampage in Venice Beach. Coyotes would attack a car. The wolves had eaten all the dogs. The big cats ate the little cats. Mountain lions ate themselves. Migration was from here to there. Entire populations.…

The Little Bitch Was Miss Sugarnut

I had been his teacher. Just fuck me. It was a small farmer town Farmer Town. We never were the boys on farms. The whole dog and pony show. Stop. Backup. Tony Lama’s. You mean, what happened. No one knew. No one knew them, and they had no identification. They…

still, he does have a gun in your mouth

The Red Army and you are the diva of the whiskey pool table times ten. You said you knew what you were doing. We are so much past that, now. No one knows what they are doing. Not you. Not me. Not French TV. The Old Incarnation Ritual. And then…

Going Rogue

fellow travelers

A Tour Through a Pandemic On a Bike. Protest to Protest. City to City. Riot to Riot. America Is a Culture in Crisis. I have no idea if this is fiction or nonfiction. I have RAVNHPB4. One Of The Symptoms Is Neurological Hemorrhagic Dementia. Internal Bleeding Of The Brain. I…

Maps Are Us

I Could Read Him Like a Map We all have one. A map into our ideology. A Map into the easement of a nonpossessory piece of property that one man holds, and another man holds, but not really.  A rag-eaten shawl as map of skies and skies. Moths and graveyards.…

My Ass Was Jesus Numb

Riding long distances on a dirt bike is kinda crazy. And… And nothing. We stopped at a church. It was more a ruin than a church. My VaVaVoom. We collapsed on two wooden pews. “People still come to church.” Andrew is observant unless his dick is hard. “Yes. People still…

I told My Stdents 2 Kill Themselves

An Excerpt From the New York Times and Going Rogue West Liberty High School, Iowa Most teachers had given up on the lot of them. The bad ones. The kids who fall between the cracks into the awesome, Great Divide. Great Divides are everywhere. It was about learning to debate.…

The Four Seasons

GOING ROGUE The private sun was slipping quietly across the private timeline of the bed. The space-time sex-continuum. This would require emergency room service. All Georgetown beds have a timeline. All covens have a timeline. A private timeline with a private jet to whisk us all away. The Four Seasons…

IT IS THE SCANDAL THAT IS THE SCANDAL

IT’S THE SCANDAL THAT IS THE SCANDAL Emmanuel Carrère has set the literary world on fire again. His new book, YOGA, is being sold by its French publisher as nonfiction. The horse is dead. But it gets kicked anyway. In these kinds of economic discombobutations, I make it a habit…