Jordan Dotson

Writer

about

There’s always a Robin…

By

The silence of Jaelin Brewitt understood them all. His minimal stepping out the door saying he would be back the next day. And he would be back not before the next day. All three of them talking for hours about things like the machinery of the piano, fishing, stars. This year, he told Bolden, there is a new star, the Wolf Ryat star. It should be the Wolf Star Bolden said it sounds better. It sounds better yes but that’s not its real name. There were two people who found it. Someone called Wolf and someone called Ryat, Jaelin Brewitt said. There was that story between them. Later both of them realised they had been talking about Robin.

…from Coming Through Slaughter, by Michael Ondaatje.

Whatever sounded bright and shiny…

By

We were language’s magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny.

…from Salman Rushdie‘s imperfectly perfect novel, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which I hesitantly allow to be considered the greatest “music novel” ever, instead of Coming Through Slaughter, if only because Vina Apsara is the sexiest female character in literary history, which makes perfect logical sense thank you very much shut up.

The Truth of Fiction

By

While I have used real names and characters and historical situations I have also used more personal pieces of friends and fathers. There have been some date changes, some characters brought together, and some facts have been expanded or polished to suit the truth of fiction.

…Michael Ondaatje, at the close of his first novel, Coming Through Slaughter. How come when he says that phrase, “the truth of fiction,” it sounds magnificent, but when I do, I sound like a middle-aged hippie dad painting watercolors on an easel in the backyard shirtless in socks and short shorts?