overlooked genius

Novelist division:

James Crumley. Potboiler/noiry stuff set in the American west, for a literate audience.

Check out One To Count Cadence and tell me the guy shouldn't be getting some serious love.

 

The great Vernon Parrington, high-end colonial American historian, former Oklahoma football head coach and ruinous alcoholic.

Trying to find a (paper) supplement at this time but cannot.

http://www.astonisher.com/archives/parrington.html

 

Zeke, one of my best friends has spent a few evenings (and a few afternoons) drinking whiskey with Crumley, then driven him home when he was not sober enough to drive himself.

This is a beautiful thread, one I don't feel all that qualified to add to, but let me throw out two suggestions:

1. Folk/country singer Lori McKenna.

http://www.lorimckenna.com/music

Her early stuff is awesome (The Kitchen Tapes, Pieces of Me, Paper Wings and Halo), almost like a blend of Lucinda Williams' lyrical poetry with Tammy Wynette's smoky twang. She got a minor bump a few years ago when Faith Hill recorded a few of her songs and she ended up on Oprah as a result, though Oprah only wanted to talk about her five kids and not her music. Pieces of Me and Deserving Song are two of my favorite songs, beautiful and sad at the same time, definitely worth two bucks on iTunes. But just to give you an indication of how daring she is, one of her most popular songs is a cover of Radiohead's Fake Plastic Trees. I think her people have tried to make her sound a bit more commercial on her last two albums, but her early stuff kicks ass. Though I prefer her darker stuff, I'm fairly certain Mrs. Double Down would rank McKenna's song, Fireflies, in her all-time desert island top 5. So if you're ever looking to make a mix tape for the lady in your life, give it a spin.


2. Poet Richard Hugo.

http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2006/11/16/entertainer/ent03.txt

http://www.missoulian.com/specials/100montanans/list/020.html


Not only was Hugo a beautiful poet and writer, he was an exceptional teacher, and his collection of personal essays (The Real West Marginal Way) is one of my favorite books. Hugo wrote about the things he knew best: drinking, fishing, war and heartache, and was convinced that honesty -- no matter how brutal -- was the real inspiration for art. (In my opinion, all his best poems are about bars.) He convinced kids from tiny towns all over the West that their lives and their experiences were worthy of poetry, and that the best bars were kitschy, dirty, poorly-lit places with stuffed moose heads on the wall and two silent drunks in the corner. He was a finalist for a couple National Book Awards and a Pulitzer, but won neither and died at 58 of cancer. "Writing matters," Hugo wrote, "because it's a way of saying you and the world have a chance."

Here's one of his most anthologized poems, about the rundown town of Philipsburgh, Montana. I love, love, love the third line, the last good kiss you had was years ago.

 

And didn't Crumley write a book titled The Last Good Kiss??

 

Yes he did. Those Montana authors just shamelessly steal from one another, don't they?

http://1heckofaguy.com/2006/05/29/madeleines-from-%E2%80%A6-reading-the-last-good-kiss/

(Hugo and Crumley were actually drinking buddies and friends.)

 

Good writers borrow, great writers steal.

 

DD -- I envy your friend. A lot.

And I love that quote from Hugo, too.

 

Cool thread.

I'll throw in John Dos Passos. Back in the 20s and 30s, he was right up there in the pantheon with Faulkner, Hemingway and Fitzgerald, but somehow fell out of favor. His USA trilogy is fantastic. Does Frederick Exley count as overlooked? "A Fan's Notes" is probably the best book I've ever read.