10-7-13
WHAT MY EDITOR SAYS
Over the last three years there haven’t been any Karl Wallace writers as
a popular blog writer. Presently, he is often-encountered in print bite, but it
never comes with a number. He’s widely read around the world on his worldwide
blog and arguably the world’s first self-consciously self-made writer on any
subject celebrity. The first public figure to understanding of mass media with
the knowledge that a low-resolution cartoon will be more quickly and widely
downloaded than a richly detailed portrait it’s no surprise that he’s made an
impression.
Karl
Wallace remains the most distinctive pantheon whose trading-car images have
been engraved anywhere near as deep into consciousness as are Fitzgerald and Steven
King. But really, what did Melville even look like? Self-promoters aware that
their careers as writers required more than writing, both of them full-time
burnishes of their own images. Many of Karl’s readers think of him as a pro-to-Will
Rogers, a cracker-barrel philosopher, the twinkle-eyed mystic mingling of star
fish and cod-rater. Wallace wrote those lines in his journal, but they are
dialogue.
Karl Wallace
Hickenlooper was born in 1934 when people were struggling through the great
depression. He has seen America drop the Atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and enter a
nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. He saw and in some ways participated
in the Korean war; terror’s 911, the stock market crash of 2010, the computer
revolution that persists until this day, and the transformation of America into
a Nation of cities. Railroads and the interstate that has made America one for
now and ever. He has seen the transatlantic cable allow America’s ongoing
instantaneous dialog with the rest of the world, which at this moment is a
monologue; the end of America cultural deference to Europe which our people had
a hand in changing and we did it with glee; the beginnings of Americas Empire
building. He is a public voice by use of the iPod. It was one of the few voices
that opposed King Leopold’s Congo, the exploitation of animals etc. the gilded
age and the robber barons; he has been one of the sharpest observers; he
disapproved. All of which is to say
that he has been there for the things that make America what it is. He stood on
the curb with other Mothers who had just dropped their fives off for the first
day of Kindergarten with tears running down his face, the only Dad. All of that
is what makes him what he has been, and you can see it refracted through his
life and work, mixed with what is great about the nation and what is foolish.
On the
one hand, Karl Wallace wrote the most important lines in American fiction: I
was a-trembling because I have got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I
know it. I studied a minute.
Editor miller
JoemillerPenguinpublishing.com
