I’d normally feel guilty about not firing off a Norris Note as per the weekly(ish) schedule, but I’ll confess, not this time! Why? Because I’ve been obsessively working on my next books. The last few weeks have been a quasi-2020-style lockdown all over again, except pouring over the keyboard into the euphoric (often tequila infused) nights in my tarry cloth between manic pull up sessions instead of inhaling doomsday news from all quarters.
It’s supremely foolish to talk overmuch about book manuscripts for the same reason most expecting couples wait until the end of the first trimester to spill the beans. Or why the prudent CEO doesn’t brag about his world changing startup before the funding is in the account. The time to crow and bask is necessarily when the ink is dry on a book deal contract, never before.
Nevertheless, I’m happy to say I’m working on a Salmon in the Seine sequel and another completely different project of an entirely new genre. Whether this is the last you hear about these or not will be borne out over the following months. The thrill of the fight! I’m very much in the ring—exactly where I want to be.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Just a reminder that there are two events on my radar that you, dear reader, should join if you are able. Especially if you are within striking distance of Wenatchee, Washington, and Los Angeles.
COMING OF AGE BETWEEN 9/11 AND THE GREAT RECESSION W/LAUREN KAY JOHNSON, OCT. 4 @ 4:00 PM @ WENATCHEE PUBLIC LIBRARY
I’m extremely excited to join fellow MilSpeak author and millennial memoirist Lauren Kay Johnson for this reading and discussion. Lauren’s war and my commercial fishing/outdoors experiences have many striking parallels shaped by the defining great forces of our era from Forever War to our warping economy—the costs of which always seems to fall on well meaning normies just trying to do our bests. Why? I’m still not sure, but sharing our stories is a good start.
While the spin on the millennial generation has thus far been of a neurotic mob of smartphone obsessed, avocado toast eating cosmopolitans too delicate to hear naughty words on social media, ours have been lives of grit, adventure, tragedy, patriotism, questioning, getting our butts kicked, and, well, coming of age in strange, dysfunctional times. Join the conversation in Wenatchee if you can!
MR. TAFFLE’S PANTS OF INSANITY LIVE! AN AUDIOBOOK RELEASE PARTY EXTRAVAGANZA, OCT. 14 @ 8:30 PM @ THE LAST BOOKSTORE
If you can get yourself to the legendary The Last Bookstore in L.A. for this event, I think you’re in for a treat. Full bar. Food trucks. The first ever Pantomime & Rhyme theatre experience!? C’mon!
Daniel Finkel, The Fink, and I met at the Chanticleer International Book Awards where his book Mr. Taffle’s Pants of Insanity won First Place in the Mark Twain humor category. I’ve read it and it is a one-of-a-kind work. His self-stylized marketing says it all. Lose your mind with us, sizzle!
Norris Reads: How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement by
A local high school friend sent me a Fredrick deBoer article the other week, “I thought of you when I read this” kind of deal. I dug the piece and noticed the writer was visiting Seattle as part of a book tour for his new work How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement. We decided to go and it was a great, energetic Town Hall-style event. My buddy and I went on to chat about our good nation for a few hours in a bar. Ah, I need a night like that every once in a while. A little hotblooded, 1776ish real talk is the perfect dash of hot sauce in the soup of American life.
Anyway, I’m just now starting to crack How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement. I’m not a deBoer expert, but my impression is that he as a successful indie writer was born from the first wave of East Coast-based political bloggers and has managed to ride the tiger of that lifestyle through bitter Twitter battles and the volatile, chaotic cultural storms of our times. He is an avowed Marxist, which I am not, and tends to use Marx’s primary texts as ideals to compare current lefty politics to. I think he is a cultural critic first and foremost, chomping at the bit to dismantle hypocrisies and fallacies.
I grew up in Portland, Oregon, and you can’t throw a stone in that town without hitting a Marxist like deBoer. I only say this to demonstrate that I’m familiar with this philosophical framework—which I think has a similar list of pros and cons as most ideologies. But what I appreciate most about deBoer thus far is his warrior spirit. He just dives in, grenades be dammed, to make his points that are solidly reason-based (even if you disagree). I almost get nostalgia when hearing him, if only we were in a 23rd Ave coffee shop on holiday break between semesters in 2012!
What drew me to this book is the central premise. This may be news to some of you, but I actually drove all the way up from Florida to sleep on the concrete of Zuccotti Park during Occupy Wall Street as a college kid. I also was “in” the infamous Black Lives Matter-aligned CHOP in Seattle during 2020. I’ve been in other public protest events too, a big believer in the citizens of democracies standing up for what they believe in. These rights are enshrined in the Constitution for good reason, folks! Don’t we celebrate the Boston Tea Party in our history?
However, frankly, I’m amazed at how “we” of these 21st Century movements fail so spectacularly. We may objectively be the least effective protestors of all time, the gap between the high degree of social engagement versus real, positive results that improve the country is a bottomless, poop-smelling chasm stretching beyond the horizon. What starts as a noble cause miraculously blossoms into a real army of beautiful souls in the street… then a switch flips and in a matter of days it all goes sideways. Suddenly we’re not gathered as one people to prosecute bankers who defrauded us and crashed the economy—no no, we’re here to demand a grab bag of 23 not-going-to-happen daydreams and be democrat partisans!? What starts as a straightforward demand for a due process trial of a policeman who executed an unarmed citizen spirals into a literal anarchist zone that’s hyper fixated on how normal people are supposed to speak and interact with one another—as Jamie Dimon kneels in front of his Monopoly Man bank vault?! Dafuq.
Oh, the cherry on top? Fellow citizens in the community who were sympathetic to our cause end up HATING. US. And yes, that does matter if the foundations of what we do is humanitarianism and citizenship. And no, the majoritarian people who live in the community who liked us last week but are now mad we’re going off the rails are NOT the problem. It’s like we’re trying to be the keynote speaker at a Humane Society gala after publicly throwing a burlap sack of kittens into the river. “Huh? Why are you all booing at me?! Do you hate animals?!”
WHY does this keep happening? We’re in a rut, it’s a social media-based program that gets booted up every few years and ends with the same results. Well, I think deBoer is rightly looking under the hood at how a lot of this sabotage I’ve seen firsthand has its fingerprints with the so-called “Elite”. While different than what I normally read, I’m giving his book a shot. Maybe I’ll be able to connect a few dots with what I’ve experienced in the field. If not, hey, tequila is within reach so life’s not too shabby.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article listed The Last Bookstore event on October 15. The event is on October 14 and that correction is reflected herein.