Music and Missing Books

An old favorite of mine Jorma Kaukonen has released River of Time on Red House Records. This album is without his old sidekick Jack Casady and contains 13 cuts of Jorma and his group on acoustic. Recorded at Levin Helms studio/ house in Woodstock, it's the best sounding album of Jorma's over the last few years. The pleasure comes in hearing a musician become even more accomplished at an instrument you first heard him play at 13. If you want, you can learn Jorma's finger-picking style at the Fur Peace Ranch in Ohio at his workshops. Jack is also there for bass lessons.

But the real purpose of this entry is to ask the question about books that are missing and we're--alright only me--are waiting for.
1. Ralph Ellison's second novel Three Days Before the Shooting has been promised for over a year. This is a great story for literature fans. Long rumored not to exist. Ralph Ellison claimed the manuscript was burned in a fire at his home in western Massachusetts and subsequently rumors went around that Ellison never really wrote it. He suffered from writers' bloc. After his death,his executor received from his widow boxes of mauscript pages and floppy discs (remember them) from a variety of computers and in different software. Together with a student assistant, he pieced together the final draft of a huge novel. The student assistant had to locate the various computers--some almost PC prototypes--to decipher the text and create a time chart of each draft. Ralph Ellison always told Albert Murray it existed and they often talked about chapters but after years people began to think it was like Truman Capote's Unanswered Prayers, a novel which was talked about but didn't exist in manuscript form. The first excerpt of the novel was published as the long "Juneteenth" several years ago. And we have been promised the full masterpiece over the last year. So far, I have not found any pub date and it keeps being pushed off.
2. William Burroughs' Evil River. In Bill Burroughs estate, a completed novel was found. Amazon has had it listed off and on for the past three years. I have pre-ordered it for the whole length of time and have now gone two Christmas' without it. Now Amazon promises an April 1 pub date, which I'll believe it when I see it.
3. Herman Melville's Complete Poems and Billy Budd as edited and annotated by Melville scholar Herschel Parker. Both volumes have been promised in the Newberry series of the Complete Herman Melville. It's hard to imagine the hangup on Billy Budd. The Complete poetry I understand since it has only been in the last few years that newly-found bits and pieces have come to view.

Then we have Missing Authors:
1. James Ellroy. Since becoming a cult writer and cult figure, James Ellroy has only surfaced as the writer of very short pieces. At one point, he suggested in an interview he had been researching the Clinton years with an eye of writing about them. A perfect idea since the Clinton years brought back in force the use of private detectives such as Terry Lenzer, who would be a prefect tool for melding Hollywood and Washington decadence.
2. Ian Rankin. This is unfair since Exit Music came out only a short time ago. In it Detective Rebus retires. But Rebus takes with him the dead cases from his career. It was clear that Edinburgh had outgrown Rebus' character. It had become yuppie-ized and European. The dead cases allow both Rankin and Rebus to go back to a nitty-grittier time more in character with the main character.
3.George Pelecanos. Pelecanos is the only novelist writing now that actually captures the real Washington away from the political world. After his last novel, he said he was exhausted and that it was harder each time. He's been writing for television shows like The Wire. Don't go, George.
4. J.G. Ballard. Last year Ballard left his readers with the distrubing news he was dying of cancer. We just want to know how's he doing.
5. J.D. Salinger. The New York Times already did their annual J.D.Salinger story. Has he been writing all this time? Is Janet Malcolm right--there are two completed novels in his workroom? Will we ever know? Is this the biggest Truman Capote?
6. Mary Oliver. One of our leading poets has actually been prolific since her life companion died a few years back. It's just that I could use another Mary Oliver soon.