J.W. Burleson photo / Boquillas del Carmen, Coah.

PHB

My photo
Brooklin, Maine, United States
We own a 1975 GMC Sierra Grande 15 in Maine and a 1986 Chevrolet Custom Deluxe 10 in West Texas. Also a pair of 1997 Volvo 850 wagons. Average age in the fleet is 28 years--we're recycling. I've published 3 novels: THE LAW OF DREAMS (2006), THE O'BRIENS (2012), and CARRY ME (2016). Also 2 short story collections: NIGHT DRIVING(1987) and TRAVELLING LIGHT (2013). More of my literary life is at www.peterbehrens.org I was a Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study for 2012-13. I'm an adjunct professor at Colorado College and in the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte. In 2015-16 I was a Fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. The Autoliterate office is in Car Talk Plaza in Harvard Square, 2 floors above Dewey Cheatem & Howe. SUBSCRIBE TO THE AUTOLITERATE DAILY EMAIL by hitting the button to the right.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Rainbow North of the Canadian: coming onto the Lllano Estacado


           A couple miles north of the Canadian River, coming into the Llano Estacado. 
           The novel I'm writing starts on the Isle of Wight, spends most of its time in Frankfurt in the Twenties and Thirties, and ends--thanks to Karl May--on the Llano. 
            May never actually saw the Llano  and his imagined landscape does not have much to do with the real place, which is a gigantic mesa sprawling over part of the Texas Panhandle into New Mexico. The Llano is high plains, not desert. The  translation (below) gives a hint of why KM never sold in English. Wish I could read the German; but if I could  there would be a lot of writers I would go to before I got around to Karl May. 
          But thanks to May I was dreaming the Llano when I was in Frankfurt last January. I like to think of him conjuring up his own private Llano during a doleful German winter in 1894:
            “A nocturnal ride across the desert which stretches itself out in the moonlight! How much I wish my dear readers could feel the majestic sensations which allow the human heart to swell higher and higher. However, the heart must be free from worry and from all that could oppress and constrain it…. If only someone could give me a quill from which the right words would flow to describe the impression which such a nocturnal desert ride brings forth from a devout human heart!"



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