“Creosote”: Notes From A Novel Never Written

While installing a new desk in my home office this afternoon, and transferring the contents of the old desk to the new, I came across an eight-year-old notebook. The 7×5 inch plain paper book was crammed full of handwritten notes for a novel I was once sketching out, a distant memory now but the scribblings remain.

The novel was to be titled Creosote and concerned a popular L.A. artist, Max Grimshaw — modeled in part on David Hockney and writer Dennis Potter — who is a miserable, mean-spirited severe psoriatic. He is estranged from his son, also a painter, who lives in the mythical fishing village of Melville, Washington. When Max’s son commits suicide, literally blowing his brains out onto a blank canvas and leaving behind a note that simply reads THIS IS NOT A PRETTY PICTURE, Max travels to the town of Melville in an attempt to understand his troubled son’s flameout.

Why Creosote for a title? Well, it’s a bush that flowers in the desert. According to my notes:

Able to dictate water rights, it is believed that the creosote produces a toxic substance to prevent other plants from growing too close.

Other notes:

CHARACTER NAMES

Max Grimshaw, Romola Martin, Furminger, Hatchett, Gaily Mae, Taplow (sculptor), Armistead Krebbs, J.T. Isham

THE PSYCHIATRIST

Max pays a visit to the shrink who was treating his son for anger managment issues, court-ordered therapy. The shrink is quirky, makes his own Rohrshack blots, used to work in Children’s Social Servces, follows the four-pronged method of therapy. Objective: (1) to develop a trusting relationship w/a therapist as evidenced by open communication of feelings and thought; (2) to discuss loss and how it impacts current behavior; (3) to identify the feelings connected to the loss; (4) increase ability to verbalize and experience the feeling states of loss and grief.

ON MAX GRIMSHAW’S PAINTINGS

Christ crucified, a gathering of crows hovering at his nailed feet, precariously holding golden goblets in their beaks to catch the dripping blood.

MAX (to his business manager, Romola): The series will be a parody of religious art — Bosch, Michaelangelo, what have you. Look carefully at the face of Christ in this one … it’s Jeffrey Hunter.

MAX AND ROMOLA

ROMOLA: I didn’t even know you have a son.

MAX: Had. Past tense. There’s a lot of frayed fabric in the overcoat of my personal history that you are unaware of.

RANDOM PROSE

– regards her with near-religious gravitas

– glacial reserve, a faint English affectation

– debris-strewn acreage

– flatbacking, straight-sex prostitution

– they shift on their feet like a couple of shy dancers

– the dramaturgy of his life

– thunderheads piling against the mountain

– signs of strain and deep-seated fatigue in his dark, shadowed eyes

– fishing trawlers, moored, big, sleek aluminum beasts with aluminum hulls and radar antennas

STRAY DIALOGUE

MAX: Find my ex-wife.

ROMOLA: Which one?

MAX: Lily. The boy’s mother.

~~~~~~~

SOMEONE: Have you ever been told that you’re an arrogant bastard?

MAX: With alarming frequency.

~~~~~~~

MAX: I believe in myself, ergo I believe in God.

~~~~~~~

WRITER: — well, to that point I would counter that B. Franklin was a self-published writer.

(Max makes a snide comment about Franklin helping to introduce commercial painting)

MAX: What I’m talking about is a concept called the democratization of the arts. It began with the music synthesizer in the 70s, and has reached an apex with the Internet.

~~~~~~~

ROMOLA: I busted my ass — and my father before me — to get you where you are today. Do you know how difficult it is to make people interested in something they don’t care about? There hasn’t been a true arts rennaisance in this country since the Seventies.