Thursday, July 02, 2020
I have begun working on my novel about the Actualists, but that's partly because a vision for a complete novel came to me fairly easily, and it just started coming out of me at a time when I was taking a break from other things I'm writing. It is not a historically accurate novel; that is, parts of it will be entirely fiction. But it does have the serious non-fiction goal of documenting some aspects of Iowa City in 1975, particularly the parts that made the biggest impression on me. It is very specifically set in that year, and those actualists moved around a lot, so I'm not sure I can get it as true to life as I'd perhaps like. And maybe it doesn't matter that much.
A bigger question arises as to how much poetry I can really put in there. Obviously I have to put some, or how is anyone going to get a sense of what actualism is all about? I can make up some, ok, but it won't be as good or as authentic as what's already out there. But here's the last choice: I can maintain that I heard it; this gives the original author the credit, as if that person were actually there. But in fact I want to avoid real references to real people, because then I'll get hammered on authenticity. It's fiction.
So yes, I have a few kinks to work out. I have my work cut out for me. I really admire the actualists and want to do them justice. The whole hippie era, I kind of want to show it, for good and for bad, how it happened in iowa city. it wasn't that different from other places, yet it had its own iowa brand, iowa style, iowa everything. i miss the place. i plan to put it in a kind of prose verse. wish me luck!
