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Eyewear Publishing - Brian Jabas Smith

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193 pages

English

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Literary Nonfiction. Essays. This book is a chronicle of the overlooked and unsung, a collection of award-winning essays based on Brian Jabas Smith's popular column, "Tucson Salvage."

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Publié par	Eyewear Publishing
Date de parution	29 mai 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781839780431
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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MORE THOUGHTS ON
TUCSON SALVAGE
A true champion of the dispossessed and forgotten. Smith s one of the few journalists giving voice to the voiceless. We need this now more than ever. I can t recommend this book highly enough.
- Willy Vlautin , author of The Motel Life , Lean on Pete , and Don t Skip Out on Me
These aren t stories of the movers and shakers of our world, these are stories about the rest of us, the lucky ones trying to hold it together under the daily grind and the not so lucky who have been crushed by all the moving and shaking. Brian Jabas Smith lovingly describes these people, their remarkable spirit and resilience and the city and desert they call home. Thank God or whatever deity may be out there that we have gifted writers like Brian Jabas Smith who have chosen to undertake the noble endeavor of telling these stories, and to remind us that these human beings who exist in the shadows are as much as those who live in the limelight.
- Tom Hansen , author of American Junkie and This is What We Do
Brian Jabas Smith sees stories in the faces of people the rest of us don t notice, and he tells them in a way that s impossible to ignore. The writing is terrific, but it s the grace, the empathy, his reverence for humanity, that makes this work so beautiful and important that it takes my breath away.
- Amy Silverman , author of My Heart Can t Even Believe It: A Story of Science, Love, and Down Syndrome
In this collection of essays Brian Jabas Smith empathetically captures the plight of the disenfranchised, the forgotten, and the misunderstood (often people of color) that comprise the backbone of the cultural landscape of urban Arizona. Read this book and try not to weep - ideally you will.
- Pat Thomas , author of Listen, Whitey! The Sounds of Black Power 1965-75 , and Did It! Jerry Rubin: An American Revolutionary
These are haunting, human stories written with an expert s eye for salvation. In his profiles of the overlooked, the forgotten, and the dismissed, in his ability to stop while others move on, Brian Jabas Smith has captured the spirit of Joseph Mitchell and set it to roam out here in the desert. If you think you know Tucson, stop and read this.
- Thomas Mira y Lopez , author of The Book of Resting Places
I can t think of an American writer who captures place with as much empathy, precision, and grace as Brian Jabas Smith. Tucson Salvage: Tales and Recollections of La Frontera is as gritty as it is kind, and Smith s prose sparkles with insight and heartbreaking description. In these pages we encounter a gifted writer at the height of his powers. An enviably brilliant book.
- Cal Freeman , author of Fight Songs
Whenever I want to hear about the truth about what s really going on in the world of the American Southwest and the particulars of that regional story, I turn to the writing of Brian Jabas Smith. Smith doesn t flinch or turn away from telling the truth exactly as it is, straight on, no chaser. His tales of lives lived hard but true take us inside the everyday struggles of what it means to be alive. The American Southwest may be a desert in the eyes of most, but Smith shows us otherwise: that this is a region infested with sharks, and these are true stories of people - artists, magicians, fighters, hustlers, bus-stop mystics - swimming to save their lives. Pick up this book if you don t mind your whiskey from the well and your habaneros dipped in the Rimbaudian fires of hell.
- Peter Markus , author of The Fish and Not the Fish , We Make Mud , and Bob, Man or Boat
They say everyone you meet has a secret that would break your heart. In Tucson Salvage , Brian Jabas Smith meets with the discarded men and women among us and with an openhearted curiosity searches for the humanity in these secrets and finds it. Every. Single. Time.
- Danny Bland , author of In Case We Die , and I Apologize in Advance for the Awful Things I m Gonna Do
Brian Jabas Smith s street poet writings are quilted with a lean patchwork sewn up with extensive thread. It s poised work that allows the reader to walk away knowing someone they ve never met. He is remarkable in such infiltration with the rare breadth of delivering poetics in prose, as opposed to cons. It feels like it s a matter of time until he scours the entire cityscape revealing all that lurks in shadow land, himself a beacon.
- Howe Gelb , singer-songwriter, Giant Sand
First published in 2018
by Eyewear Publishing Ltd
Suite 333, 19-21 Crawford Street
London, W1H 1PJ
United Kingdom
Graphic design by Edwin Smet
Cover image photograph by Brian Jabas Smith
Printed in England by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
All rights reserved
2018-2020 Brian Jabas Smith
Based on the column, Tucson Salvage , which first appeared in the Tucson Weekly ,
9/2015-Present. Used with publisher permission.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
The editor has generally followed American spelling and punctuation at the author s request.
Set in Bembo 12 / 15 pt
ISBN : 978-1-83978-043-1
WWW.EYEWEARPUBLISHING.COM
Briansmithwriter.com
Tucsonsalvage.net

Dedicated to Howard McDonald Smith
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword by Dan Stuart
Introduction by Jim Nintzel
Suicides, mothers and sons
You die trying
Still life at the Chatterbox
War on Vets
Humble glories on 22nd
Cyfi graffiti bomb
Hanging out with Ray
Murder, acceptance, community
The ballad of John and Pepper
Death or glory
Gold-fever General
Sacred-hearted he-beasts
Trailer-court sparkle
Stuck in the middle
Song remains the same
Radio head
Xanadu at The Mint
The fighter
Muslim cowboy headshop
Not fade away
Flying up Old Spanish Trail
Dog days of summer
Cops and tweakers
Feast of snake
Keep the motor running
Last exit to Tucson
The bike whisperer
Magic Johnny Appleseed
The legend of Bambi
Tenacious C
Looming grace
War machines
Outside the box
Up in smoke
A love-stoked world
The Runway
Bad art, killer psych
Sticky summer nights
Desert Dust to dust
Tao of Arthur
Waiting for the man
Acknowledgements
FOREWORD
I-10 heading west travels pretty much a straight line from the Atlantic ocean to a point just south of downtown Tucson, where it takes a hard right north towards Phoenix and despair. To the left lies Mexico lurking like a huge Gila monster, one can feel its hot breath all the way from El Paso. It s a junction that acts as a vortex, an asphalt and concrete divining rod with the aquifer underneath shrinking by the day. Two imposing granite and pine partitions - the Catalina and Rincon mountains - form a natural shelter for the city, keeping past lives and disappointments at bay. An outpost for the lost and weary, a sanctuary for misfits, miscreants, and misers, Tucson is the town that refuses to be a city, even with a half million denizens that now call it home.
A friend of mine from San Francisco once asked me why Tucson has so many drifters and dreamers - this was right after a bartender jumped over our beers and knocked out a surly drunk in a dive called The Boondocks - and I replied that people trying to get to LA run out of gas or the radiator goes and they just wind up staying. They find a weekly rate hotel, get a minimum wage job, and put off the better life in California for the next month or so. Soon, however, their physiology starts to change, it s hot and dry and they become desert creatures, moving slowly from shade to shade and never without shades which could leave one blind. They morph into cactusheads and like a saguaro that only grows an arm a century become patient in spite of themselves. Without really trying, they soon develop a philosophy they can live with. It really is quite extraordinary.
Brian Jabas Smith knows these desert dwellers, his people, just like Studs Terkel knew his in Chicago. Born and raised in Tucson, a champion cyclist and fantastic punk frontman in his youth, he came and went a few times but finally returned for good when life and love became unbearable in a rust belt capital where the sun doesn t shine but a few months a year, and half as bright at that. To pay rent and keep the swamp cooler blowing, he put his hard-earned journalist chops to use and started writing a column for the local weekly. He called it Tucson Salvage and dedicated it to the kooks and crannies of a city that only a native can uncover and fully understand. It really was no different than his childhood hikes in the desert, turning over rocks and poking into holes to discover what others wanted no part of: strange and sometimes venomous critters to be treated with respect and wonder. A naturalist back in his element, he hit his stride in middle-age, the opposite of poor brilliant Joseph Mitchell hiding in his New Yorker office with nothing left to type. A collection of critically acclaimed stories soon arrived called Spent Saints , bittersweet tales about the demon meth and the endless 40 s of nasty brew that used to sustain him night after night, before sanity returned like a favorite cat not seen in years. Mirroring his characters and subjects, Smith allowed himself to believe in the desert s power to bake the hurtful past right out of you, leaving only the sanctity of today, this moment right now. He replaced the racing bike of his youth with long rambles through town to see what s new, or more often, what has changed and will never return. It was the perfect match all around, writer and environment, and unlike crusty Edward Abbey, who aged about as well as mayonnaise left in the sun