Tim Barrus Blog
Posts tagged with tim-barrus
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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…
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ChinaTown ChinaTown
It’s about the money. Everyone has their bugabuga religion. What happens to speech. Speech here. Speech there. I want to know about speech in Russia, the DRC, what happened in France, les confréries de la langue, what is speech in Japan. I hesitate to use the term Free Speech anywhere.…
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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
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Dirt Bike Town
Proof of Endurance
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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…
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Year of the Hyena: Gay Soldiers in Vietnam
Year of the Hyena, a Novel by Tim Barrus Gay Soldiers in Vietnam
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Blue Ridge Baby
Revenge has a few things to hang doubt upon. – Tim Barrus
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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…
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Road Trip
I wake up in the morning with Romeo Void in my mouth. I will slit my wrists without coffee. Coffee. I go to work constructing Romeo. Knowing full well, the critics finally get the final say. Or do they. Get anything. Most of them will flog me (don’t even go…
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porch
He sang songs in this rocker. And he forgot his hat.
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Pierre at Cap Breton
Pierre at Cap Breton
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Do you like it? Boy, I Want, Want, Want, Whatchu Want, Want, Want, Give It 2 Me, Baby, Like Boom, Boom, Boom
Do you like it?Boy, I want, want, want whatchu want, want, wantGive it to me, baby, like boom, boom, boomWhat I want, want, want is what you want, want, wantNah, nah-ah Published as non-fiction, each memoir recounted purported aspects of the author’s life. The memoirs referred to his Navajo heritage,…
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Sitting in the Car Alone
I see shadows. And they move. Time itself is a choreography. I still cannot believe he’s gone. I only get kicked like this if there’s rain. I have no idea why. I had to break the door down. He was so glad to see me. I realized, he was probably…
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Oscar Has No Clothes
I so do not care about clothes or fashion. I only wear clothes when I take the dog out. I wear farmer jeans and Tshirts. I do not care about film. I am a dinosaur from Appalachia. In 1934, I stopped watching anything produced by Hollywood. The last TV show…
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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,…
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How 2 Beat Authority
I attended a violent high school. Teachers were overwhelmed. One broke my bones and made me walk to a hospital on a broken leg. Death threats every single day. Humiliation every single day. Degradation every single day. Enforced nudity every single day. Our problems had nothing to do with pushups.…
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Dirt Bike Town
Diaspora never happens in a vacuum.
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I Had Died an Hour Before
There is nothing serious about mortality.
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Literary Critics
We sell writers. Often, down the river. One book critic for NYT who reviewed one of my books (it was a rave) attempted to pour gasoline – what else – on my personal life. His students physically followed me around for years. We might not be the characters we create.…
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Comment Moderation is Uncivil
Censorship as an apex predator. The ideation of ideas. We are only allowed to think if exposed to an official archive. Google’s search engine and all those little boxes popping up to pull you into the rabbit hole. The New York Times is not social media. The New York Times…
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Jeep Sex
Dirt Bike Town and the Ha Ha
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Memphis and the Bluez
If I was your boyfriend. I have tried to photograph Memphis for decades. The bluez will slip secretly between your fingers. I am a failure as a writer, a lover of those jaded eyes, and I have failed Memphis as a subject. Failing Memphis is like failing love. It’s the…
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Incendiary Comments
Comments are not unlike Sumerian Literature. Figures embedded in clay. Or Egyptian hieroglyphics. In that these things tell the stories of the species.
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Putin Wants a Little Piece
We get up and go to work and we get up and go to work and we get up and go to work. What would Americans do if suddenly, Putin brings up the historical reality that Russians (Fort Ross) ruled California, therefore California was part of Russia, and deals or…
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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…