Daniel Silliman

Reading material

Current:
Camera Lucida,
Roland Barthes

For the year:
1. Prophecy & Apocalypticism,
by Stephen L. Cook
2. The Salmon of Doubt,
by Douglas Adams
3. Absalom, Absalom!
by William Faulkner
4. Farewell, My Lovely,
by Raymond Chandler
5. Ham on Rye,
by Charles Bukowski
6. The Inner Circle,
by T.C. Boyle
7. Breakfast at Tiffany's,
by Truman Capote
8. The Crying of Lot 49,
by Thomas Pynchon
9. The Poet,
by Michael Conely
10. As I Lay Dying,
by William Faulkner
11. Slumdog Millionaire,
by Vikas Swarup
12. 2666,
by Roberto Bolaño
13. Teaching a Stone to Talk,
by Annie Dillard
14. The Most Beautiful Woman in Town,
by Charles Bukowski
15. White Butterfly,
by Walter Mosely
16. The End of the Affair,
by Graham Greene
17. Fathers and Sons,
by Ernest Hemmingway
18. Into The Wild,
by Jon Krakauer
19. Close Range,
by Annie Proulx
20. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men,
by David Foster Wallace
21. By Night in Chile,
by Roberto Bolaño
22. Killshot,
by Elmore Leonard
23. This is Water,
by David Foster Wallace
24. Public Enemies,
by Bryan Burrough
25. Breath,
by Tim Winton
26. The Savage Detectives,
by Roberto Bolaño
27. Loving Che,
by Ana Menedez
28. Ender's Game,
by Orson Scott Card
29. The Short Stories,
by Ernest Hemingway
30. Cities on the Plain,
by Cormac McCarthy
31. Charlotte's Web,
by E.B. White
32. The Selfish Gene,
by Richard Dawkins
33. Good Omen,
by Terry Pratchet & Neil Gaiman
34. Where I'm Calling From,
by Raymond Carver
35. The Armies of the Night,
by Norman Mailer
36. The Street Lawyer,
by John Grisham
37. Legacy of Ashes,
by Tim Weiner
38. Oblivion,
by David Foster Wallace
39. Seize the Day,
by Saul Bellow
40. Literary Theory,
by Jonathan Culler
41. The Absolutely True Diaries of a Part-Time Indian,
by Sherman Alexie
42. Slouching towards Bethleham,
by Joan Didion
43. War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning,
by Chris Hedges
44. Flying Home,
by Ralph Ellison

Daniel Silliman

9.6.04

Geraniums red

I’m buying a red geranium. Setting it in the window. I don’t know why. It’s a symbolic act but I’ve forgotten what it symbolizes now.

Like it’s a dream that maybe I had before and almost means something and I can't quite convince myself to focus against the pleasentness of letting it slip away.

I just want to look at a red geranium in my window. Stare at it.

Get lost in the red.

by Daniel Silliman @ 6:47 AM. : Comments 0

8.6.04

Robert Quine, punk guitarist who played with Richard Hell & the Voidoids, Lou Reed and Tom Waits, is dead at 61.

by Daniel Silliman @ 5:24 PM. : Comments 0

Whatsoever you lock

When my brother was 6 he had the key to the Bank of America, our local branch. He'd found it in a parking lot, I think, stamped "BANK OF AMERICA" and I don't know why Dad didn't take it from him and return it, but he didn't. David added it to his key chain, another one in this mass of keys that went to every lock he'd ever known. It looked like a huge softball jammed in his 6-year-old pocket and he jingled more than Christmas when he wore those keys and grinned.

We talked about how we could get into the bank because David had the key and we could rob them. This outlawery appaled my mother, and she'd remind us it was wrong to steal, but it wasn't about stealing it was about power and how David had found some in the parking lot.

Marvin knew that and kept giving David keys. Marvin was this woodcarver, pecan farmer, and Texas good old boy we knew who'd lost two and a half fingers in a tractor accident and had his wife leave him because she wouldn't live with a cripple. He had a dark sense of humor. He'd always promise to "be there - unless I'm dead." But he taught us a lot about knives and gave David keys.

We'd ask, but he didn't know what they were to. "I've got keys to half the old trucks in McClennan county," he'd say, waving his half a hand, "I don't know what they're too."

And when we drove around David'd sit by the van window, looking for old trucks he might have the keys to.

I got keys to the apartment second or third day I was in Ambler. A couple weeks later I had keys to the Texaco station - the wanted sign was cumpled in the trash and I had a jaggedy little key on my ring that fit the front door of the Texaco if I gave it a good stiff wiggle.

Two more keys on my ring. It made me nervous, actually. The weight of my pockets was off. I started worrying about remembering which of my four keys was which and started thinking about how I've never settled down.

I never liked keys. With power comes responsibility, they say, which is a pretty goddamned benign way of saying it when you realize it's a Faustian proverb. Other men are rattling around their keys scaring away ghosts and for me, they're being conjured. I understood that kind of power. That deal.

I'd seen furniture hawked to pay rent, seen vehicles stranded on the edges of highways and on the back sides of parkinglots. I'd seen where the sweat rolled through the grime that made you look like someone they'd decided not to bury alive afterall, at least not today, and they paid a quarter of what they leached from your soul.

And when we drive around I'd look out the window, looking for abandoned old trucks and wondering who's still carrying that curse of a key for seven years, who's soul is still locked by that lock, who's ghost is still trying to get the engine to just turn over.

by Daniel Silliman @ 4:41 PM. : Comments 0

7.6.04

Drawing doors on rocks

red

by Daniel Silliman @ 5:49 AM. : Comments 1

6.6.04

Riding a bicycle in circles.
Growing a Prussian beard.
Accidentally eating Hunter Thompson.
Smelling a woman’s hair.
Holding books between my teeth.

and other pleasantly odd dreams on Sunday afternoon.

by Daniel Silliman @ 4:28 PM. : Comments 0

This week

This week I was twice introduced as a philosopher.
This week I was made an honorary Egyptian and named “Dan the white guy.”
This week I told a customer flirting with me to “just go away.”
This week I had my kitchen cleaned by a woman with tribal tattoos.
This week I received a letter of apology for the way someone acted when I was 13.
This week I dealt with one angry customer and one computer break downa day.
This week I went to a diner with the friend of a friend to talk about watching a baby die.
This week I was sworn at by my boss for three days.
This week I ate with the girls named “the brides of Dracula,” twice.
This week I was confused by their jealousy.
This week I realized my roommate’s plans are a mask for winging it.
This week I re-read Heidegger.
This week I had my first day off in since mid-May.
This week I couldn’t remember who I was.

by Daniel Silliman @ 6:17 AM. : Comments 0