Random Cottonwood Podcasts

“An engaging picaresque novel of a young man on the run. A warm, well-told story of a likable character with a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” —Publisher’s Weekly Willy Middlebrook is a nice boy from the suburbs, a Vietnam vet, a college drop-out majoring in Human Kindness. Framed for the murder of a cop, Willy goes on the lam from the law. With hopeful heart and broken balls he lives among the people of the humble cafes and dusty bars, underground: “They have rough brown skin and wrinkled eyes. They are round and they are usually dirty. They are hard because they have to be, but if you warm them they get soft and you can make them sweet.” Famous Potatoes is a road novel with a touch of noir, a tall tale that has been called “exuberant, funny, and humane.” “Like the smudged chrome of a truck-stop diner, Famous Potatoes is an element of a new American realism, and Cottonwood has made it an engaging trip.” —Chicago Tribune The year is 1973. Back in those days only bad people got tattoos; long distance calls cost a small fortune; and an IBM 360 computer with a few hundred kilobytes was enough to run a bank. “Cottonwood [has] charm–wry, loping, never cute. And, even more crucial, there is Willy’s (and Cottonwood’s) genuine people-liking, which makes Willy’s complications seem less dire; the troubled travels become a nice excuse to meet more interesting folks. Laid-back–but not too much–and attractive.” —Kirkus As a young man, Joe Cottonwood used to hitchhike everywhere. Many of the encounters in Famous Potatoes are based on actual events from those times. “Blessed with that wonderfully extravagant and original talent for telling tall tales, Joe Cottonwood weaves a whopper that catches you up and rockets you overland as Willy hitches himself on to one crazy adventure after another. . . Willy ‘Crusoe’ Middlebrook, anonymous fugitive, naive suburbanite, sexual suicide, husband on the run from Philadelphia and St. Louis to the sky-high Rockies of Idaho . . . ” —Black Swan “Philadelphia may never be the same again.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer This podcast is rated deep R for bad language and occasional scenes of funky sex. And a lot of joy. Author’s note: I wrote this novel forty years ago as a cockeyed love letter to the USA. I was a young man without children. Now I am a grandfather. A few of the passages, as I review them now, could make a grandfather blush. Nevertheless I have resisted the impulse to censor any youthful excess. I’ve also let stand the passages that would now be deemed Politically Incorrect. They are an accurate rendition of the times (1973).

Categories: Arts

Tags: cottonwood, famous, joe, potatoes

A fat boy with the blues. A skinny girl who runs marathons. And a con man on the lam. If you liked Clear Heart, or if you liked Boone Barnaby, you’ll like this one, too. The themes are a bit more grown up than Boone Barnaby, but it’s still family-friendly for reading. For any age it’s my brand of writing: humane, down to earth, good-natured, sometimes funny and sometimes sad. Babcock plays electric guitar. He’s writing songs – and trying to figure out the true meaning of rock and roll – but he keeps coming up with the blues. Babcock is trying to start a friendship with a girl, Kirsten, who is as different as can be: Kirsten is skinny; she hates insects. And she’s white. Babcock is fat; he speaks to dragonflies. And he’s black. In some ways Kirsten is like a dragonfly: quick and bright. She never walks; she runs everywhere. Her family has money. Her mother thinks Babcock is a little too “rough.” Opposites attract. But can they make music? Babcock’s family is struggling for money. Then Babcock’s Uncle Earl moves in – and he moves into Babcock’s bedroom with Babcock’s menagerie of animals (including Martin Luther Kingsnake.). Uncle Earl is a con man on the lam. Uncle Earl used to play drums for Chuck Berry. Babcock wants to be Chuck Berry. Uncle Earl wants to coach a Little League baseball team – as a “business venture.” Babcock hates baseball. Babcock wants to learn “charm” from Uncle Earl. Uncle Earl wants to learn how to live a normal life and marry a normal woman – who happens to be Babcock’s schoolteacher. Maybe Babcock and Uncle Earl have something to teach each other. Babcock’s father runs a car repair shop. At night, in the kitchen, he draws cartoons. Some day he wants to quit repairing cars and sell his cartoons. But nobody’s buying. Kirsten is hotheaded. Sometimes she needs protection – from herself. Her mother tries to protect her – from Babcock. For help with his problems Babcock goes to an unlikely source: his Uncle Earl, the man with good charm and bad behavior. But the biggest lessons from Uncle Earl – and, perhaps, from rock and roll – are not what anyone expected. In short, it’s about character. About making music. About family, hard work, about love and loss. Sometimes there’s laughter. Sometimes the lights are off in the kitchen; papa’s got blues. But always life is rich and deeply moving… I call Babcock a post-Obama novel. It’s about the friendship of a black boy with a white girl, and it isn’t about racial issues – well, not much. Have we really reached that point? Is our cup half full? The odd thing is, I wrote this novel in 1992 when nobody, including me, had heard of Barack Obama and when book critics wanted bloody racial conflict whenever black and white characters mixed in the pages of a novel. Maybe I was 16 years ahead of the times. Babcock is part of the San Puerco trilogy, which makes it a companion book to Boone Barnaby: same characters (plus a few new ones) and more adventures in the scrappy little town of San Puerco. The book won awards as a novel for children, but it has many adult fans, too. Most of the issues appeal to an adult perspective as well as a child’s, though with different understanding. Other issues, of course, only a young person can understand. That’s life. That’s rock and roll.

Categories: Arts, Kids & Family

Tags: babcock, caroline, cottonwood, graham, joe, michael, minard, susan, walker