Fred Wemyss

This is as far as I got in my attempt at writing a 50,000 word novel in the space of a month last year. Each November is National Novel Writing Month, as the web-page I'm about to list will tell you.
http://www.NaNoWriMo.org
Check the site out.
I wrote 8,000 and some words.

Anyway, here's what I wrote. A lot of it is almost incomprehensible, but if you wade through it, a little of what I have tried to convey comes through. The word tally is included just above the story:

Word Count So Far
8246 / 50000 words Novel Excerpt
(10,000 character limit)

The Shokan

By Frederick Wemyss

THE RACOON ATE the raw hamburger meat. It held the chunk between its paws.
"Don't get too close," the scientist said. His sons peered over the edge of the porch at the raccoon. "Who wants another hamburger?"
Each of the three boys said they wanted more.
"I'll make you another one if you finish the one you have, Bob," said the scientist.
"Daddy, I want another," said Fred.
"But you have almost a whole hamburger left," said the scientist.
"But I want another," said Fred. He was four.
Frank, who was eight, said, "I'll have another."
"Do you want onions?"
"Yes, please."
"Can I have onions?," said Fred.
"I'll give you more onions." The scientist took the paper plate with Fred's hamburger on it and set it on the picnic bench near the grill. He cut some more onion slices and put the onions on top of the hamburger.
"I'm finished," said Bob, running toward the grill.
"All right," the scientist said. "Would you like to make your hamburger this time?"
"Yes!" Bob shouted.
His father handed him a chunk of ground round. The little six-year-old, as the raccoon had with his paws, held the chunk in his hands. He pushed his hands together hard. He showed his father the patty.
"That patty's very thin," said the scientist. "I'll have to peel it off your hands." He did this. "Do you want onions, Bobby?"
The boy nodded three times.
The scientist took a handul of the onions he'd chopped, put them on the patty and rolled the patty and the onions into a ball. "You made it a little too flat to mix onions in, so I'm making this again." He held out the ball. "Here. Hit that with the palm of your hand."
The boy hit the patty the scientist held out, flattening it a little.
"There," said the scientist. He put the hamburger on the grill.
"Can I feed the raccoon?" Frank asked.
The scientist looked over his shoulder. "Throw him a little, but stay away from him. We've already fed him."
The purple darkness of the sky blended perfectly with the mountain now. The scientist said the word "Walpurgisnacht," and felt the warmth of the grill. "Frank," he said.
"Yes, Daddy?"
"What did Thomas Mann call one of those?"
"You mean what's the German for 'raccoon?'"
"No. That," said the scientist. With his left hand, which held a two-pronged fork, he made a sweeping gesture.
"Der Zauberberg!" said Frank.
"What would raccoon be?" said his father.
Frank said, "I don't know."
"I'll ask you another," said his father. "What would a magic raccoon be?"
"Der bergs. Der bergs whatever the word for raccoon is."
"Zauber is magic. Raccoon is almost the same in German."
"Der Zauberracoon?"
"The raccoon is under the house!" shouted Fred.
"He's gone to bed," said the scientist.
"He's under the porch," said Bob.
"Leave him be," said the scientist. "It will be time for your bed soon."
"How does he know when it's time to go to sleep?" said Bob.
The scientist flipped over the burger. "He doesn't know, actually."
"But it always goes to sleep at the same time."
"Always," said the scientist.
"He's an animal," said Frank.
"A raccoon is a very intelligent animal, but he doesn't plan anything."
"But he knows we're always out here when it gets dark."
A coal burst in the grill.
"No," said the scientist. "He doesn't know that. He's used to it. First the smell drew him. It's probably drawn alot of little animals who are sitting out there.
But he'd have never drawn near if we hadn't thrown food for him. Remember the first few days? He took the food and went away. Now he is habituated to this."
"What does habituated mean?" said Frank.
"He's gotten used to a pattern. He doesn't calculate our return. He can't help coming here."
Headlights shown on the house and moved across it. The scientist put the fork under the burger and lifted it. "Get a bun, Frank," he said.
"Who's here?" said Frank.
The gravel crunched as the car climbed up the hill.
The scientist took a bun from the bag and put it on the hamburger. "Take your burger, Frank."
The boy took the hamburger. He ate a bite.
Fred peered under the porch.
Bob put more onions on his hamburger.
The car door slammed. "Wemyss," said an authoritative voice.
"Damn!" shouted the scientist. "Doggy-damn! It's Whitsun! I thought it was a carload of Birchers!"
"It's a carload of booze, Wemyss. Help me get it out of the trunk!"
"But who is the gargoyle in the back?"
"That's me, Wemyss," said the person in the back, leaning forward and sticking his head out the front window.
"Chambliss! I thought as much! Come on in."
"You know how much I'd like to, Wemyss, but Archer will be wearing out the carpet if we don't get there in time for his mother's dinner."
"You're going dressed like that?"
"Oh, we're not going, Wemyss. But waiting for us is Archer's excuse for delaying being there. He'll let us in and then take the car. You'll see the lot of us tomorrow."
"I wouldn't expect otherwise," said Wemyss.
"Well, Wemyss," said Whitsun, returning from the porch. "Don't trip over the box of scotch."
"You're not bringing any to Archer's?"
"It's tea and warm milk there tonight. It's his mother's birthday. Unfortunately, he has to make a speech."
"He has to be at the Great Chalet by 9:00," said Chambliss, still leaning forward in the back seat.
"Isn't that late for an old lady's birthday party?"
"That's it exactly."
Chambliss said, "We've got a book for you, Wemyss."
"That's right," said Whitsun. "Joy ran halfway down Riverside Drive and handed it to us at the traffic light."
"JOSEPH UND SEINE BRUDER!" said the scientist. He recited the opening lines in German. "Very deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?"
"Is that what you said to the German prisoners, Wemyss?" Whitsun said.
"I was the candy kid," said the scientist.
"Daddy!"
The scientist looked at his third son.
"Can I give Raccoon my hamburger?"
"He ate already, Fred."
"Is that how well you cook, Wemyss?" said Archer.
"Wemyss, we're going." Whitsun got in the car. "We'll try to bring Chambliss tomorrow if he doesn't stay in bed all afternoon."
The scientist said, "If he can't sleep after a supper with the D. A. R., he's hopeless."
"He's hopeless if he can't sleep during it," said Whitsun. The car backed slowly down the hill.
"What's the D. A. R.?" said Frank, who had been standing there the whole time.
"Chambliss's mother and friends."
"But what's it stand for?"
"Diamonds And Rubies."
"'A' never stands for 'and' in an acronym."
"You're too smart for me, Frank."
"Daddy!
"Okay. It's Daughters of the American Revolution."
Frank said, "It should be Great-granddaughters of the American Revolution."
"How old do you think she'd be if she were born in 1776?" said the scientist.
"Two-hundred and eighty-eight," said Frank.
"No," said the scientist. "But you're partially right."
"One-hundred! One-hundred and eighty-eight."
"Say one-hundred-eighty-eight, not 'and' eighty-eight."
"Okay."
"Okay, boys," said the scientist. "It's bedtime."

IN OUR STUDY OF WEMYSS'S "THE SHOKAN," we need a little prehistory. While Wemyss's effect was to reveal the story through cumulative detail leading to one explosion, we do not have his leisure.
It helps to know that at the opening of the story, we have Wemyss's father, referred to only as "the scientist," cooking hamburgers for his three young sons. It is summertime, evening has come, and all are enjoying the nightly return of a little raccoon.
One ought to know that in real life the raccoon had a name. Wemyss, of course, could not remember it when writing "The Shokan," so his way of incorporating the fact that the Wemysses held such affection in their hearts as to give the raccoon a name, is to have his own counterpart, the four-year-old Fred, refer to the raccoon as "Raccoon."
Wemyss vociferously denied that the Wemysses called the little creature "Ricky," which is the sort of name only Scout leaders would give a raccoon, but nor was Wemyss at all sure the name was any other name at all. This would seem to indicate the animal had no name, but what we mean to say is Wemyss forgot the name he was certain his father, his brothers and he himself used in reference to the raccoon.
Wemyss takes a liberty, in fact, in having only Fred (the four-year-old) use a proper name for the raccoon. The father (still, at this point, called "The scientist" or, in relation to either of the three boys, "his father) refers to the woodland visitor as "the raccoon" and so do the older boys (Frank, eight years old and Bob, six.) In this way the father and the two elder brothers are given, somehow, a knowledge of the world which Fred Wemyss, the character, does not have. In reality, of course, he (the author) is fictionalizing a summer evening a father spends with his three children, the children being, indeed, not merely the sons of their father, but what society recognizes as people of innocence, that is, children as such. So, only "the scientist," in real life, had knowledge of the world, and the three boys, eight, six and four, had, more or less, one to the other, an equal degree of innocence. Wemyss the author of "The Shokan", of course, gives the character representing himself an almost superhuman innocence, while Frank and Bob, his brothers, are earthbound. They do not call the raccoon by name, as if he were a pet, even though, in reality, that is exactly what they did.

BRAINBITER WAS RAISED high in the air, light striking its edges so that Brainbiter himself felt bravest of all double-headed axes purchased that morning at the Elephant Store in Ashokan, New York. With a backdrop of fleecy clouds and patches of sky the color of an as-yet-unhatched robin's egg, Brainbiter took joy in being the most useful of inanimate objects. "Sing of Brainbiter," Brainbiter fairly sang. "Hoist Brainbiter!"
"Crack!" With the precision of a surgeon, Brainbiter cut to the heart of a fallen birch branch.
"Further back, Frank," the scientist said. "Stay on the porch!" he shouted to Bob and Fred. He put his foot on the branch, rolled it and raised the axe again. "There's always the possibility this could fly off the handle," he said in a softer voice.
"You could sue the store if that happened," said Frank.
"Crack!" said Brainbiter.
"Frank," said the scientist, "Add this to the stack."
In all, five logs were cut that day, from one and a half branches!
Brainbiter stood at attention against the porch wall afterward, for the rest of the afternoon, into the twilight, into the early evening and right up until the time he had to say, "Who goes there?" Then something knocked him down!
"Raccoon's on the porch!" shouted Fred.
Raccoon looked back at Brainbiter and waddled away.
"Well let's make sure make sure the door's shut," said the scientiist. "We don't want him going inside. Frank, go shut that door."
"Can I throw the raccoon some hamburger?" said Bob.
"I have been forgotten," said Brainbiter as the boys threw ground round at Raccoon.
Raccoon licked his paws.

"DEEP IS THE WELL OF THE PAST," read the scientist. The Coleman Lantern on the little uneven table shed harsh light on the words and the tome cast a great shadow on the checkered table-cloth. The scientist had read the sentence three times that night. First, he stole a glance at it just before he put Bob and Fred to bed and then as he opened the bottle of Balentine. He recited the line outloud to Frank in German and then Frank went to bed. He poured the ale into one of the copper mugs and sipped from the cup. He licked the foam from his upper lip. He put the mug down, thought about the day and took another sip.
He read the first line again.
He wondered if Mann had been in Germany when he wrote the words or if he'd already begun his exile.
He thought of the ruined hospital where some other G.I.s and he had had to chase a mental patient from a tree and inject him. He thought of the other mental patients who helped hold that one down.
He thought of Christmas Eve, 1946, when the entire population of the little German city packed a little church to the rafters. He thought of the German prisoner he'd sometimes talked to, who had no idea, when he asked him, that his, the prisoner's name, Paul Baumer, was the same as that of the main character of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. He remembered thinking the population of that little German city needed to pray on Christmas Eve in 1946. "Deep is the well of the past," he read.
In the next two hours the scientist read sixty-five pages. He rubbed his eyes and the lamp died.

WE DO NOT WISH TO DIGRESS any further, or, at least, any further than necessary. We have dwelt on the fact that the raccoon was called by a pet name, even though it was not a pet, and that Wemyss distorts the picture of the actual reality by having only the youngest of the three sons call the raccoon by a name. This leads us to another little creature which plays its part in this adventure. Wemyss was faithful to reality here. He reports that there was a rabbit all the Wemysses called Gunnar. He was Frank's charge. A screened-in area for the rabbit to run in had been built, one assumes by the scientist. This structure ran the short length of the lawn and, turning a right angle, its long length also. Wemyss's memory may have been playing tricks on him, however, so we may have to assume, again, that the truth has been misused and that, actually, the captive was confined to a length of ground which did not turn and which did not run even the short length of the lawn. One may doubt, indeed, that the rabbit had the freedom to run, inasmuch as the running was an event. Frank would shout, "Gunnar's running!" One may say, "Well, perhaps whenever the boy noticed the rabbit running he would draw attention to the fact." And yet Fred Wemyss always insisted that these times were always immediately preceded by a feeding of the rabbit. And yet one must concede that rabbits, unlike dogs and cats, do not race toward a bowl of food the moment it is set before them -- and we know cats are even reluctant in this respect -- and that a rabbit's taste of water, when distributed by human hands, is always from a little upside-down bottle with a little bead of water acessible only from the bent tube in which a rabbit-tongue is inserted. This causes us to doubt that there were so-called feeding times. We do know the rabbit ran within its confines, but was it free to run the length of the confines at all times? Wemyss never says.

IN THE SUMMERS OF 1962, 1963 AND 1964, my parents rented a nice old house in Ashokan, New York, near, but, I believe, not quite in, the Catskill mountains. The rest of the year we lived in an apartment in New York City.
I am the youngest of three children, all brothers. In 1962 I was two, my brother Bob was four and our brother Frank was six. I am forty-five years old now.
In 1962 my father was thirty-nine and my mother was thirty-five.
My father was drafted into the army during World War Two. He served and remained stationed in Europe until about a year after the war ended. His time in the army interrupted his time in college. When he went back home he went back to college. By the time he and my mother met he was in graduate school and she was in college. They married in 1951, three years after they met. Frank wasn't born until November of '55, so, while he and my brothers, being children of World War Two generation parents, can be called Baby Boomers, many of the landmarks associated with the lives of the Baby Boomer generation don't apply to us. Elvis Presley hit the scene before Frank was born. Frank probably doesn't have much of a memory of the Cuban Missile Crisis and certainly Lucy and Ricky's baby was born without Frank noticing. We didn't have a TV until 1965. We didn't even have one when Kennedy was shot. That was earlier, anyway.
When I was in elementary school on Long Island, the parents of the other children seemed younger than mine, although, when I think of it, all my friends had a father who'd been in the second world war. The meaner kids seemed to have parents who'd grown up at the drive-in. I didn't get along with kids whose parents were ten years younger than mine. Those were the kids with Mattel toys and stingrays.
After we moved to Long Island, which was in 1965, summer would approach and I'd say to my father, "Can we go to the Shokan?"
He'd say "No," as if he hadn't liked the place.
Then my mother would add, "We have the house here!"
I hated Long Island.
Well into my thirties, a friend of my parents asked me if I remembered Ashokan.
"I remember it vividly," I said. I told her I'd always wished we'd gone back after 1964.
She said, "Well, you couldn't."
She and I were smoking a cigarette. It was a party for another friend of my parents. We hadn't seen most of the people there in years. She was delighted to see me smoking on the porch and had come outside. She took a drag of her particular cigarette and said, "The landlord told your father the partying was too much."
"What?"
"He wouldn't rent to him again."
So, my father'd liked the Shokan after all.

THE NAVEL-GAZING of the Baby Boomer is in full force in Frederick Wemyss's THE SHOKAN. One only has to realize it takes place near Woodstock, New York to realize we're going to be victimized yet again by the Fattest Generation and told, in so many granola-encrusted words that we missed out. I, for one, begin to suspect the World War Two generation suffered as much, if not more, at the hands of their spawn the Boomers than even we have. Thanks, Baby Boomers, for the all-consuming egotism, exhibitionism and whining. And thanks for using all my Social Security. And no, you can't have my understanding. That bitter possession is MINE! [TIME-OUT review, 12-23-05]

THE CUMULATIVE EFFECT of this one is of a trapeze-artist falling off the rope and swooping toward a nervous-breakdown instead of a trampoline, only to be scooped up by another Flying Walenda for a session of standing-on-shoulders while swinging back and forth above the stage Madison Square Garden. [Customer review at Amazon.com.]

"I HATE THIS book."
"Why don't you get Cliff's Notes?"
"They don't make them for this."
"That sucks."
"Yeah."
"My sister read it."
"Did she like it?"
"I don't know."

"OH, HEY, YOUR BROTHER says you read THE SHOKAN."
"Oh, yeah, I read it.
"Did you like it?"
"Yeah."
"What's it about?"
"Why don't you get the Cliff's Notes?"
"They don't make them."
"That sucks."
"Yeah."
"Well, I don't think you'd like it."
"Well of course I don't like it."
"Can't you read something else?"
"I can read TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD."
"Why don't you read TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, then?"
"Because it sucks."
"No, it doesn't."
"I can't read three-hundred pages."
"Well, can't you get the Cliff's Notes?"
"The teacher said we couldn't use them.
"Wait. My brother said you were looking for Cliff's Notes for THE SHOKAN."
"Yeah, but the teacher didn't say we couldn't use Cliff's Notes for THE SHOKAN."
"So, use them."
"I said, they don't make them."
"Why don't you read THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA?"
"Because I read that last month."
"You read THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA?"
"Well, I actually read the Cliff's Notes."
"But I thought you weren't allowed to use Cliff's Notes."
"That was before she stopped us from using therm."
"Why don't you use the Cliff's Notes for TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and just say you read the book?"
"Because she can tell."
"Oh, come on!"
"Did YOU use Cliff's Notes for TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD?"
"No. I liked TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD."
"Have you ever used Cliff's Notes?"
"No. But my brother does."
"So, does he say that when he had Ms. Wycherley she couldn't tell if he was using Cliff's Notes?"
"No. She failed him for using Cliff's Notes."
"So she can tell."
"Ellen uses Cliff's Notes and nobody can catch her."
"But Ellen's a brain."
"And you're not."
"That sucks."
"Yeah."

WHAT IS VERY STRANGE IS THAT, while set in the summertime, THE SHOKAN is a Christmas story. The visitors with the box of booze are the Magii, the eldest and youngest brother (Frank and Fred), are the shepherds, Raccoon and Gunnar are the barnyard animals, the scientist and his wife, cradling their child at the moment of the arrival of the Magii, are Joseph and Mary, who have just learned that they are being evicted and Bob, of course, his head crowned in blood, represents Jesus Christ, whom Herod could not kill.

I CAN'T TELL a story. I can remember everything about Ashokan but I can't put it on paper. I remember everybody who came up there to visit. I remember the neighbors, I remember the Elephant Store, I remember the Big Deep, I remember going to the Great Chalet, I remember the shallow pool at the great Chalet and the big Totem pole outside. While Frank and Bob and my father swam in the big pool behind the Great Chalet my mother and one of the other women in their circle of friends would take me to the front of the Big Chalet and hold me while I waded in what they called "the shallow pool." The word 'shallow" and the word "Chalet" evoke the same memories of bright sunlight moving in little waves over splashing water. I remember the little bat the children knocked down in mid-air with a stick and a cat which held the bat in it's mouth. I remember the Daddy Long-legs in the outhouse. I remember Jennifer running with me near the flowers and our mothers telling us not to go near because the bees might sting us. I remember putting my pinky near a flower and a bee stung that pinky and I remember Jennifer atnding by the charcoal grill with me and my father telling us not to put our fingers in the grill and I put my pinky against a bright red piece of charcoal and burned that pinky. It didn't hurt as much as the bee sting. I think it was the same day. I remember my grandmother being there with my aunt and me running on the lawn with my sweater and my grandmother saying that if I was too hot I shouldn't wear my sweater and I shouted back "But then I'll be too cold!" I remember being in the car with Dad as he drove forever up and down hills the time he rented the TV. It was getting dark and he pulled into a gravel parking lot and said, "Come on." We went inside a building with gadgets. Fans, bicycle chains, flypaper, sandpaper and screwdrivers were all over the surfaces of big metal tables. A man said he had one TV left and took a TV with orange paneling and white trim from a wooden shelf. I remember the white cord dangling from the TV as my father walked to the car with it and the drive back up and down hills in the twilight. I remember asking if I could watch cartoons when we got back. The next day I kept switching the station to cartoons when he went out of the room. He'd look at me chastisingly and switch it back to almost complete static and I could see flickering images which kept jumping. My father would react to the TV. He'd laugh. Then he'd be reading and not watching. Suddenly he'd watch again. "Now don't change the channel," he'd say. He'd go to the kitchen and I'd switch the channel again. "No, no," he'd say when he came back and switch it back. I remember all of my time at Ashokan was compelling and I can't express it.

"WHY WOULDN'T YOUR FATHER let you watch cartoons?" said Elise.
"Well, it was the '64 convention."
"He was watching a convention?"
"Dad loved conventions."
"Nobody watches conventions. They're the most notoriously low-rated programs on television."
"Well, Dad never watched the high-rated ones."
"But you wanted to watch cartoons."
"But he rented the TV to watch the convention."
"So who was nominated? Eisenhower?"
"Eisenhower?"
"Well I don't remember. I wasn't alive."
"Well it was Johnson versus Goldwater."
"Johnson's so repulsive."
"You don't automatically think that if it's 1964, Kennedy's been dead for six months so it must be Johnson?"
"Well maybe it was the Republican convention!"
"Well, then, wouldn't you automatically assume it was Goldwater if it was 1964?"
"Don't minimize me."
"What?"
"I was born in 1967."
"But you know enough about Johnson to say, 'Johnson's so repulsive.'"
"I don't have to know exactly when he was president to know what he was."
"I acknowledge that."
"You don't acknowledge that!"
"Of course I do."
"Oh. That's Melissa Etheridge."
"What?"
"That song."
"This song?"
"Shhh. I wanna be her."

"I DON'T GET the reference to the Magii. If it's only two people bearing booze they can't symbolize the three wise men."
"It's a later scene. Three friends of the Wemyss's arrive just after Bob gets back from the hospital."
"But this guy says his head is crowned in blood."
"It's not crowned in blood at the exact moment they arrive, but earlier it is."
"And the mother isn't in the scene where he falls out of the tree."
"No, but she's in the part where he comes home and the Magii arrive with bottles of licquor. In fact, the critic missed an opportunity to say that the bandage around Bob Wemyss's head is a halo."
"I don't see any Christian metaphor."
"No, but Dr. Sherman does, so you'd better discuss the Christian imagery."
"Maybe I should challenge that."
"Why?"

"OKAY, HERE'S WHAT I WANT in the preview. Show the oldest boy running to the porch screaming 'Daddy! Bob fell out of the tree fort!' Have him scream 'Daddy' again. Have the father sitting on the porch reading this German book and sipping beer. Cut to the middle boy from the scene a second earlier where he's saying 'I can climb as high as that branch.' Cut to the older boy racing through the woods. Cut to the youngest boy standing there looking up. Cut to the father saying earlier, in the scene with the Coleman light, 'Deep is the well of the past,' and juxtapose it with him looking up from the same book on the porch as the eldest son runs toward him. 'Daddy!' the son says. 'Bob is hurt.' Cut to the youngest boy standing in the woods next to the oldest boy who is saying, 'Stay here! Stay right here!' Cut to the youngest boy looking down. He starts to run. 'Stay!' shouts the oldest boy. 'We have to know where Bob is!' Cut to the father saying 'Get some band-aids.' Cut to the oldest boy tearing at the book in his father's hands. 'Frank!' says the father. Show the youngest boy looking right down into the camera with eyes that become little tunnels which become wells. Have the father's voice during this saying 'Deep is the well of the past.' Show Bob's face, with the weird grin and the river of blood on his forehead. Have the father's voice: 'Should we not call it bottomless?' Cut to the oldest boy screaming as the father pulls the book back, 'Bob might be dead!' Then little shots of the raccoon at feeding time, the friends bringing the cases of booze, the woman racing along Riverside Drive with the copy of the book. What is it, JOSEPH AND HIS BRETHREN? Show that bit with the headlights crawling over the porch from the first raccoon scene. Show the hand reaching for the branch. Sweeping violins as the car races up the hill. Show the father pushing the youngest boy against the passenger door with one hand as he steers the wheel with the other. Show the car weaving wildly up the hill. 'How is he?' the father says as this is shown. Show the eldest boy sitting in the back seat pulling a sheet upwards. Show the youngest boy spinning around in the front seat so he can look in the back and have him shout, 'He looks like Frankenstein!' Show the car just missing a tree. Cut to the father holding the axe and saying 'This could fly off the handle.' Cut to the father as seen from the front of the car, gripping the youngest boy's shoulder. Cut to the father carrying the boy into the hospital. Play bells in the background and give the father a dazed look. Cut to black. Play the bells. Have a narrator's voice. Yes, I know there's no narration in the movie but put it here. The narrator says 'We never went back after '64.' Show the father adjusting the antenna on the rented TV and him banging on the TV. The TV shows Lyndon Johnson. Show a black screen and the words THE SHOKAN. Then have the youngest boy in the woods again, staring down. Then he's in the car, turning toward the father. 'He's laughing,' he says. Then, I guess, show the father's eyes with guns coming out."

WHAT DOES THIS TELL US about America? Yes. Yes. You.
Me? Um...I see it's set in 1964.
Why is 1964 significant?
Significant?
What happened in America in 1964?
The Cuban Missile Crisis?
No, that was in 1962.
Woodstock?
No. That was 1969.
The Red Scare.
No. That was the late '40s and early '50s. What does this book say about America?
Nothing.
Johnny's answering the question.
Yeah, but it doesn't say anything about America.
Johnny, do you agree with that?
I don't know.
Okay, Jimmy. Why do you say THE SHOKAN says nothing about America?
Well, because this book is elitist.
Elitist?
Yeah. It masquerades as a novel about a little rural summer when it's actually about an upper-class professor on vacation and the friends who went to college with him getting drunk.
What about the references to World War Two?
Well, it says the professor's in the middle of college when he gets drafted so we can assume he didn't see the army as an escape route from poverty.
And if he had been poor and had joined the army to escape poverty this would have said something about America?
Yes. It would have represented the American experience.
What if he had been poor and not joined the army?
Everybody joined the army in World War Two.
Everybody except this professor, it seems.
He represents the upper-class experience.
And that experience is not the American experience.
The majority of Americans were poor in 1941.
The majority of soldiers in the U.S. army in the Second World War were drafted.
There was more volunteering in that war than any other.
Excepting the Civil War and the Revolutionary War you're possibly right. Of course, Desert Storm and our current war feature armies of 100 per cent volunteers.
But this book isn't about World War Two. It just has characters who were in it.
What about the children in THE SHOKAN? How do they reflect America.
They don't reflect America.
Why don't they reflect America.
Because they're privileged.
Johnny, what do you think?
What do I think?
How do the children in this novel reflect the American experience?
I don't know.
All right. In 1964, in the summer that is, America was looking forward to the November election. The president was Lyndon B. Johnson, a machine politician par excellence, who, unfortunately for him, was only standing in presidential shoes that summer because the president for whom he had served as Vice-president had been shot the previous November. You know that man. Just about two years before the novel takes place, the United States had had the Bejeezus scared out of it when it was discovered that the Soviets had installed missiles with nuclear weapons in their satellite state, a Caribbean island called Cuba. JFK -- the president -- that guy. The one from the video, made a speech threatening to invade Cuba if the missiles weren't removed. For ten days the world was bracing for a nuclear catastrophe. Translation: the end of the world. Mutual Assured destruction and all that. The upshot is Kruschev -- the bald guy from the tape with the arguments with Nixon? No? You don't know that? Okay, the Soviet premier -- No, not the premiere of THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN -- I've lost you, I'm certain -- Russia backed down. Kennedy won the showdown. The missiles were removed. One year later he was dead. A Texas politician was now president. You've heard of Texas? The nation of which the USA is a satellite state? That's a joke, sons. The Texas politician, as president, vows to carry out the policies of his martyred predecessor, even though he can't really stand these policies. Because he is steeped in backroom politicking, he is far more effective in doing what his predecessor tried to do than his predecessor actually was. Sweeping civil rights reforms are effected by this man, meaning that, for the first time in American history, the votes of black citizens counted. If JFK is revered as a civil rights president, LBJ is ignored as the enforcer of civil rights reform. In any case, LBJ also pushed what he perceived to be Kennedy's desire to aid South Vietnam in its defensive war against the Commist North Vietnam. You have heard of Vietnam?
You've got it all wrong, professor. JFK was beginning to pull out of Vietnam. The CIA and Johnson had him killed and went to town with Vietnam. More blacks were drafted than whites.
A disproportionate number, yes.
So Johnson, taking the credit for Civil rights, stuck it to the blacks, actually.
Johnson is the head in the hands president.
What?
He is a cipher.
What?
Anyway, class, what does THE SHOKAN say about America?
Hey, is this on the test?

DR. BOLAND spread marmalade on her toast and had a sip of orange juice. She looked out the window at the the ceramic cat which had been positioned so as to appear to be climbing the tree.
When Dr. Boland was finished with her toast and orange juice she rinsed the glass, put it in the sink and threw the napkin away. She took the piece of paper with the directions on it, read it and put it in her purse. She went to the porch door and made sure it was locked. She went to the closet and took a sweater off a hanger. She put it on. She took her hat from the little stand by the telephone. She took her white gloves from the drawer which held the address book and put them on. She glanced down the hallway toward the kitchen, looked at the living room and walked to the front door. She opened it and stepped into the vestibule. She looked at the umbrella stand. She considered and then took her umbrella. After closing the front door she opened the very front door.
On the stoop she opened the little metal mailbox by the door. It was empty. She shut the door, put the key in the lock, turned it, tested the handle, put the key in her purse, closed her purse and walked down the steps.
She walked along the sidewalk and then up her driveway. She unlocked the garage, pulled the door upward and and then pushed it further up. She got into her car, started it, backed out of the garage, stopped the car, put it in neutral and put on the emergency brake, got out, pulled the garage door down, locked it, got back in her car and drove to Kate's.
When she pulled up, she saw a white-gloved hand part a lace curtain in a second-storey window, as it always did.
"Good morning, Lucy," said Kate when she got in the car.
"Good morning, Kate."
"Now I'm just going to stop at Mr. Benson's and have the oil checked."
"And are you getting gas too?"
Dr. Boland pulled out. "No, it's almost full."
"You don't want to run out of gas, you know."
"Oh, I know, but it was full yesterday afternoon. But, you know, I think I'll get the tires checked."
"Oh, are they low?"
"Well, I don't think so, but driving into the mountains, you know."
"Yes, you need air in the tires on gravel roads."
"Oh, I know."
"Oh, yes."
"You remember Bob Finchenhurst."
"Finchenhurst. Wasn't it Finchenhorn?"
"I don't think so."
"I don't think I remember him."
"Of course you do. He was married to Mamie Finchenhurst."
"Who was she before?"
"Gwendolyn Punker's daughter."
"Mamie Punker married Bob Finchenhorn?"
"Well, the Bob and Mamie I knew were Bob and Mamie Finchenhurst."
"I don't remember them."
"Well his tires were low in the Poconos."
"What?"
"In the Poconos."
"I thought you said 'low in the Poconos.'"
"I did say 'low in the Poconos.'"
"What's that describe?"
"What's what describe?"
"Low in the Poconos. I don't know an expression, 'Low in the Poconos.'"
"In the Poconos, which is a range of mountains, Bob Finchenhurst had low tires."
"How do you come to know he had low tires?"
"Mr. Benson told me."
"Mr. Benson told you Bob Finchenhorn had low tires?"
"Yes."
"Well, why would he tell you that?"
"Because Bob Finchenhurst, whose name is Bob Finchenhurst and not Bob Finchenhorn, hit a rock and the front tire burst and he was stuck all day."
"Oh."
"If he'd had full tires the front tire might not have burst."
"Is it true that low tires are more likely to explode than full tires?"
"Yes. I think so."
Dr. Boland pulled into the gas station.
"Hello, Dr. Boland," said Mr. Benson. "Check your tires?"

ONE OF THE FIRST things a person awakening to the bankruptcy of the liberal agenda will notice is that in any artistic representation, be it a movie, a play, a painting or a novel (a case in point would be Wemyss's desultory THE SHOKAN) good people are almost entirely absent. One may counter that there don't seem to be any good people in KING LEAR. But THE SHOKAN is hardly KING LEAR. And Cordelia's goodness has no corresponding --
Oh, put it down, Fred. "The National Review" doesn't like you. You should be happy.
But it's as if I were completely ignorant of the struggle between good and evil.
Well, what's the good in reading what conservatives say about your book?
I wanna be loved by them. Poo-poo-pa-doo. Also, they turn out to have been right about a lot of things. For example, the Russians say Alger Hiss was guilty.
Excuse me, I'm moving. I'M NOT WITH THIS PERSON!
Maybe "National Review" is right about me, Tony.
I'm sure they are. Why don't you apply for work there?
Can't we all just get along?

"GIT ALONG, little doh geeze," sang the scientist. "Oh, ride along slow. 'Cause the fiery in the snuffy are rarin' to go." He kissed Bob and Fred goodnight.
As he sat down at the checkered table he heard Bob say, "You didn't sing 'The Wild Colonial Boy.'"
"Yes, I did," said the scientist.
"No. You sang 'Ned Kelly.'"
The scientist got up from the table and stood in the doorway. He leaned in. "You got me!" he said.
Bob and Fred sat up in the bed and the scientist sat on the edge. "Just this song and then it's time to sleep," he said.
"Okay."
"There WAS a wild Colonial boy, Jack Duggan WAS his name. He was born and RAISED in IRE-land in a place called CASTLE Maine. He WAS his father's only SON, his mother's PRIDE and joy, and dearly DID his PARents love the WILD colonial boy. At the early age of SIXteen years he left his NATIVE home. And TO Australia's sunny shore he was inCLINED to roam. He robbed the RICH, he HELPED the POOR, he SHOT James MACavoy. A terror TO Australia WAS the WILD--"
"Daddy? Who was James Macavoy?" said Fred.
"A terror to Australia WAS the WILD Colonial boy."
"But why did he shoot James Macavoy?"
"One morning on the PRAI-air-ree as Jack he rode along -- "
"Is Jackie Jack Duggan?"
"A-listening TOO the mockingbird a-singing a cheerful song, up stepped a band of troopers, Kelly, Davis AND Fitzroy. And they set OUT to CAPTURE him, the WILD Colonial boy. Surrender now Jack DUGGAN! You see we're three to one. SURRENDER in -- "
"What's 'three-to-one?'"
"SURRENDER in the King's high name, you are a PLUNDERING son!"
"Was James Macavoy famous?"
"FRED," said Bob.
"James Macavoy was probably known when the song was written," said the scientist. "I'll fight but not -- "
"No!" said Bob. "He drew two pistols from his belt and proudly -- "
"He drew two pistols from his belt," sang the scientist, "And proudly waved them high! I'll fight but NOT surrender cried the WILD colonial boy! He fired a shot at KELLY, which brought him TOO the ground. And turning ROUND to Davis he received a FATAL wound! A bullet pierced his proud young HEART, from the pistol OF Fitzroy. And that was how they CAPTURED him, the WILD colonial boy! Goodnight, boys. Go to sleep."
The scientist took his seat at the checkered table just past the doorway and opened his copy of JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS.
The boys watched him reading.
Bob whispered to Fred, "James Macavoy shot Ned Kelly."
"But it says 'A rope and a rafter the sun in the east,'" said Fred.
"They hung his dead body."
"Daddy?" said Frank from the front porch.
The scientist looked up from his book. "Yes?"
"Can you sing Ned Kelly?"
"I already sang it."
"You only sang it to Bob and Fred."
"But couldn't you hear it? Well," said the scientist after a pause. He got up and went to the porch. "Ned Kelly was born in RAMshackle hut! He battled since he was a KID."
The three boys listened.

ONE NEVER GETS A SENSE, in Wemyss, that people date. There are no conversations at a cafe table with a blonde, dancing on the beach is never depicted and there are no cuddling sessions. Take the 'e' off that 'blonde' and I'll still feel warm as I read such a scene, which I never will because I'm reading Wemyss. Is his entire world made up of people who sit and read? Don't they go to Disneyworld? Do none of them play Twister? Don't they watch THE SOPRANOS? How come they don't go to the mall? When are we going to the mall?

AND DR. WEMYSS took vacation in the mountains and with him were his sons, Frank, Bob and Fred called Fred. Of these Frank was the eldest. The youngest, called Fred, was Fred, and Bob was of the middle. Now Dr. Wemyss had a wife and a goodly wife but she was in search of a Teaching Certificate and stayed in the apartment which was of the metropolis on the Mondays, the Tuesdays, the Thursdays and EVEN the Fridays, but on the first morning of the weekend, which was the Saturday in the morning, she betook herself to the mountains, which were the mountains where her husband and Frank, Bob and Fred called Fred did abide during the week and there she met them on the Saturdays and Sundays of the three consecutive summers of the 1962, the 1963 and the 1964 which was called 1964..

ONE REASON I'm jumping around so much is I'm writing this very quickly. This is one part of the novel I'm not writing as a form of parody. I have visited a website called www.NaNoWrimo.org. It's the website for what is called National Novel Writing Month. On November third I was shelving stray books at the Barnes and Noble which employs me and I saw a book called NO PLOT, NO PROBLEM. I never read instructional books about writing. But I flipped through it, gritting my teeth angrily at first. Then I found I was amused. The book began talking about the history of a group of west coast writers, each member of which challenged the other members each to write a 50,000-word novel in the space of a month. After the first couple of years word spread and now, ten or so years after this handful of writers began doing this, each November writers all over the world attempt the writing of a 50,000-word novel. Last year, which was 2004, there were something like six-thousand people signed onto the website and the year before there were three-thousand. This is an explosion. I logged on November 3rd and, as of today, which is November 28th, I have a little over 7,000 words. I doubt I'll reach the goal by the 30th, but a writer may post a ten-thousand word excerpt on the site and I think I'll manage to do that. Each time I write part of THE SHOKAN I upload what I've written. It is on the webpage for anybody to see. Simultaneously, the page counts the number of words. The book says that THE GREAT GATSBY is about 50,000 words. Literally I could type whatever is in my head and finish 50,000 words quickly, but the idea is to write a 50,000 novel you'd want to write in the space of a month. I haven't been so determined to write fiction since I was a freshman in college taking Creative Writing. NaNoWriMo is a source of contacts among writers. I've read some of the postings on the message boards and I am brought back to the atmosphere of that Creative Writing course, when I felt a kinship with other writers, or, more accurately, other writers of fiction. Last month I watched a documentary about a man about my age who lives in New Jersey. He sought the writer of a novel he'd read in his teens. Through the course of the documentary he tracks this author, who wrote a novel called THE STONES OF SUMMER. He tracked him to Iowa. The novelist had been part of the Iowa Writers Conference. I hadn't thought about the Creative Writing Mafia in many years, but, at my college, some of the figures one associates with it came to read. Frank Conroy (who is in the documentary) read at my college and I remember being very excited that somebody who thought the way I did about writing had managed to write something I cared about. A few days after watching the documentary I was shelving the strays and there was NO PLOT, NO PROBLEM. So, here I am, attempting to write a novel. The Creative Writing course I took gave me a goal. I loved it.

AND SO WE MUST close shop. Tomorrow is November 30th, 2005, which means that National Novel Writing Month will end in less than twenty-four hours. I have two notebooks, about a third of each of which contains some of the stuff above and some stuff intended to be put above but which I didn't think would work. One thing finally dawned on me today during my lunch-break when, after a coffee and a cookie, I started to write a little more of this story. This thing that dawned on me is that I want to tell a story about the time Jennifer (who's mentioned above) and I took the croquet mallets belonging to my parents -- or perhaps to our landlords -- and dropped them down the two outhouse holes. There's the story which will convey that sunny, happy time when consequence meant so little to me that when my father and Jennifer's father held us upside down over the outhouse holes and had us grab the croquet mallets one by one, I had no sense of being punished. I imagine no punishment was meant. A lesson, perhaps, was in this, but with our father's holding our ankles and swinging us in the direction of any given dung-caked croquet mallet, I had another moment of laughter with the little girl who shared with me the codeword which we were saying over and over again as we swung and which sounded itself like the lilt of laughter, with which I close:
Heee-aaah!

--Frederick Wemyss, Huntington, New York, November, 2005