The frustration sets in at the title, which is surprisingly literal. I'm Not There. And he's not. Other than the final shot of the film, Bob Dylan never appears. There is no character named Bob Dylan, there is no attempt to realistically convey the details of Dylan's life, and while his recordings dominate the film's score, all on-screen ( Read more... )

C. MacNeal woke up to the news that Cloteal Horne had died. That ethereal beauty, that quivering soulful voice that had turned a generation of boys into men, that limitless talent that was so precious we each of us should have been shocked that it had not been taken away sooner. She was too perfect for this world. She was an ( Read more... )

Tomorrow night, Will Fancher will have dinner at the house of poet laureate Robert Pinsky.

Tonight, Will Fancher fished a swivel chair out of someone's pile of garbage.

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"You have the day off or something?"

"No, I just moved here. I'm just walking around…"

"Oh. Where you from?"

"Memphis."

"Memphis. You play Blues?"

"Actually, I do."

--Pizzeria guy of indeterminate European ethnicity and myself, making small talk as my order gets filled.

"Why don't you get a fucking room?!"

--Morbidly obese woman in the company of two men ( Read more... )

 
Caballero's gut hung over his belt; he wore no buckle that could be seen. His black denims were clean and pressed; they weren't for working. His blue shirt was rolled to his elbows and before he sat on the bus he removed his straw hat and set it on the luggage rack above his seat. The hat was dirty from wear but, again, not from work. Specks of ( Read more... )

At Rise:

The front door of an apartment building in East Nashville. Night. SUELEEN steps out through the door. Her hair is poofed up like an old country singer's and her trashy outfit is tailored to make her stomach look small and her tits and ass look big. She carries a bulky purse.

She closes the door and double checks to make sure it locked. ( Read more... )

 
Pennington's wife gave our man a handjob in the theater and that was alright by him. That was the first time he knew something was different. A line had been crossed. Not then, though. Sometime earlier, sometime he wasn't sure when. It was like that muscle in his throat. When he was a boy he'd learned to play the harmonica. He had wanted to blow ( Read more... )