working title

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I may or may not have started a new novel today. Possible working title: Grand Meeting of Failures

Possible opening paragraph: "I decided I would be the historian of the movement. No one gave me permission, it was something I had to decide for myself. That is, if there even was a movement. If it didn’t all just fizzle out. The rumor was that if the Night Manager likes your work, you don’t need to pay your tab. The rumor that started it all. We might imagine how. One of us had been drinking and when it comes time to pay they’re told they don’t have to. They inquire about the reason, are told some work they made was deeply moving to the Night Manager. Then it happens again, this time to a different artist. Word begins to spread. It might be seen as a form of curation. A way for artists most cherished to keep coming back. Musicians, performers, writers, image and object makers, filmmakers, and those of no fixed discipline. Most of the clientele continue to pay for their drinks, subsidizing a small number of artists who are no longer asked to. The place is large. A few hundred who pay each night and a few dozen who do not. It doesn’t take long to find each other. We gather in the back corner. Soon many of us are coming four or five nights a week. This was all before I arrived. I am repeating pure hearsay. But it was also around the same time I arrived. Somebody mentioned this back corner to me and I immediately knew I had to check it out. I introduced myself to the first likely candidate and soon into our conversation it occurred to me to ask if anyone was keeping a record. When the answer was no, I heard their reticence as an invitation."

Another sentence for somewhere later in the book: "I’ve always imagined an ongoing game where the purpose is to try to invent an art movement."


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[I'm still working on my third trilogy (with all three books based loosely around questions concerning the desire for utopia.) So if I manage to keep going with this Grand Meeting of Failures, I suppose it would be book number ten, which for some reason feels significant to me. But often there are a lot of false starts before I find one I want to continue with. So let's see...]



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