the razor’s edge, a way of living and writing

    Ok, Younguns-

    Once upon a time, I watched "The Razor’s Edge", starring Bill Murray, which I felt was one of the most profound films I had ever seen. Many years later, I tried to read the novel upon which it was based, and I found the author's writing so boring, tedious and wandering, that I gave up.

    In my email inbox this morning from a place where beauty, love and truth breathe pretty good most of the time:

W. Somerset Maugham: On Being an Artist

POETIC OUTLAWS

MAR 27, 2024

Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul. —W. Somerset Maugham

The writer can only be fertile if he renews himself and he can only renew himself if his soul is constantly enriched by fresh experience. 

There is no more fruitful source of this than the enchanting exploration of the great literatures of the past. For the production of a work of art is not the result of a miracle. It requires preparation. 

The soil, be it ever so rich, must be fed. 

By taking thought, by deliberate effort, the artist must enlarge, deepen and diversify his personality. Then the soil must lie fallow. 

Like the bride of Christ, the artist waits for the illumination that shall bring forth a new spiritual life. He goes about his ordinary avocations with patience; the subconscious does its mysterious business; and then, suddenly springing, you might think from nowhere, the idea is produced. 

But like the corn that was sown on stony ground it may easily wither away; it must be tended with anxious care. 

All the power of the artist's mind must be set to work on it, all his technical skill, all his experience, and whatever he has in him of character and individuality, so that with infinite pains he may present it with the completeness that is fitting to it.

 ________________________________

You can find this passage in W. Somerset Maugham’s brilliant Autobiographical and confessional work—   The Summing Up.  

Sloan’s Newsletter

I didn’t read Maugham’s novel, The Razor’s Edge, but I did see the movie adaptation, in which Bill Murray is the main character whose passion is searching in England and Europe for rare esoteric books. Eventually, he ends up in a monastery, sweeping and mopping floors and helping out in the kitchen until the lama sends him, with his books, up on a snowy mountain retreat to reflect alone. After some time passes, he pulls his cherished books out of his rucksack and opens one and starts tearing out the pages and tosses them into a fire he uses to keep warm. After burning all of his books, he comes down off the mountain and ends up in Paris, where he meets and falls in love with a woman who is under the control of a heroin dealer pimp, and he tries to save her and the pimp kills her and the film ends with him wondering the meaning of everything and what’s next? 

 

A history of the English novels course and an American novels course my senior year in college caused me to romantically wonder if some day I might enjoy being a novelist and even a literature professor. 

 

My first novel, 1992, was influenced somewhat by Tom Robbins’s Just Another Roadside Attraction, Jitterbug Perfume and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, in the sense that his tales freed me to blend fantasy and stranger than fiction which was not nearly entirely all made up. 

 

Each of my books and poems that wormed their way or leaped out of me were rooted in my own deeply personal, good, bad, ugly, beautiful, raw, excruciating experiences. I can’t imagine anyone viewing my novels as literature :-), but I had fun writing them :-). 

    As in my life, my writings are on the razor’s edge. When I’m writing some something coming from inside me provoked by my Muse or by something outside of me, my soul feels like it's singing and I’m at peace, even though my life might be anything but peace.

    I named the 1992 novel Kundalina, Alabama, a smirky play on the kundalini energy well known in Hindu and Yoga lore. The village Kundalina is a Pleiadean Buddhist colony living beside the Cahaba River bridge and dam on US 280 south of Birmingham. A romp of a love story and other stuff Christianity and Capitalism might not fine entirely endearing, the unforgettable characters and plots are not entirely all made up, forewarned in the Invocation:

This tale- for it really is that and not a novel- is about Alabama, the “Heart of Dixie,” as it is called by people from those parts. None of this book is true, except the parts you believe are true. A real person didn’t write this book because no real person would be that crazy. So if you think you know a real person who wrote it, then. forget that nonsense right away. Or at the very least, keep your opinion to yourself to protect the family of the real person you think wrote it.

    I used the pen name, Jake Carruthers, initials J.C. If I had it to do over, I would use my own name, and that’s what I did when Kundalina was republished last year at the free internet library, archive.org.

    Here’s a link and free internet library archive.org preview written by a friend who does the tech work for my books and The Redneck Mystic Lawyer Podcast.

https://archive.org/details/kundalina

KUNDALINA (A Strange Tale)

by Jake Carruthers; Sloan Bashinsky

Publication date (1992)

Kundalina. It rhymes with Carolina. It is a strange tale involving mystics, space aliens(Pleiadians if you must know), and all manner of critters and wildlife. Churches, pastors, preachers, sinners, saints- of all shapes, sizes, means and manners. It even involves a particularly resilient strain of carp. Kundalina is NOT nonfiction but it strains the definition of fiction to that of a tightly pulled hair follicle from which an 800lb gorilla is hanging onto for dear life. Another way to say it is this:. Kundalina is a rollicking tale of the state of Alabama MAYBE NOT AS IT WAS but instead as ALABAMA SHOULD HAVE BEEN and MAY YET BE if Alabama were to be so lucky.

This is Sloan Bashinsky's first published novel. Mr. Bashinsky's second published novel came in form of the novel Heavy Wait: A Strange Tale, also is available for free on the Internet Archive, OpenLibrary, E-Library, and 38 torrent clients.

    Here’s a link and archive.org preview of Heavy Wait (2001), followed by the arhive.org link and preview of its sequel, Return of the Strange (2023):

https://archive.org/details/heavy-wait-a-strange-tale_202212/page/n1/mode/2up 

Heavy Wait A Strange Tale

by Sloan Bashinsky Jr,

This free book starts with an earthly and metaphysical romp about how the novel came to be written, what it was like for Sloan while he wrote it, and his irreverent philosophy of writing, poetry and living - preferring to be a frog instead of a prince.
The novel is based on a storyline given to Sloan by street performer Birdie McLaine, whom Sloan met in Key West, 2001. Sloan told Birdie he had pretty much lived about half of the storyline the year before.
A non-stop romp. A cornucopia of love, loss, lottery winnings, psychiatry, fishing, law, kidnapping, paradise mating, incest healing, human greed, criminal prosecution, karma, incarceration and spirit set in Birmingham, Alabama, Port St. Joe and Apalachicola, Florida, and the Caribbean garden island, Dominica.
The main characters, Mary Lou Snow, Riley Strange and Willa Sue Jenkins are a the gods must be crazy menage de trois only a mystic, or a street performer, could dream up. The supporting actors are lovable, detestable, unforgettable. 
There really is no way to describe Heavy Wait in writing, or verbally, and do it justice.
It is not for the faint of heart, prudes, people who hate lawyers, lawyers who think they are hot stuff, people who think Jesus loves them no matter what they do. It is not for anyone, who doesn’t have a helluva sense of humor and a fertile imagination.
Sloan wrote the story stone cold sober without any chemical assistance, There was a good bit of other world assistance.
Sloan still believes God wrote the story, and he was just along for the ride, trying to keep up with the many unexpected twists and turns, which perhaps a novelist like Tom Robbins, who wrote Just Another Roadside Attractions, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and Jitterbug Perfume might appreciate. 
Sloan doubts a novelist like John Grisham would like Heavy Wait. 
Perhaps minor actor Stepehen King would like it. Perhaps not. 
Same for Oprah, the principal supporting actress.

https://archive.org/details/retun-of-the-strange-v-20_202306 

Return Of The Strange
by Sloan Bashinsky

The long awaited sequel to Heavy Wait. This book had a gestational cycle of years and it is a rip roaring romp through America and the Florida Keys, and both the kindness and also the dark heart of the American experience. Sometimes you will laugh, sometimes you will cry, sometimes you will not know whether to continue, and sometimes you won't be able to tear yourself away from this STRANGE tale of Riley and his paradise mated wyrd love, Willa Sue. 

 

    Those three tales paint the evolution of your Grandfossil's writing style, perspective, delivery, and soul on the razor’s edge. 

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com