In Which Answers Only Lead to More Questions.

And voila! In a bold stroke of genius, Mr. Whybark (yes, the very same Whybark mentioned in the previous post) enters the words "Minnesota hanging doll" into Google, and gets a) my blog, and b) some answers (in that order, oddly enough).

(I know, duh, but this actually hadn't occurred to me. Apparently I was more interested in wondering about the doll's origins than actually finding them out?)

Turns out the doll is not actually hanging. It's just sitting in the window, as you can see in this photo (shamelessly yoinked from the KAAL TV website):


He looks a little bored, if you ask me.

So there's an old doll sitting in the window of an old farmhouse in the dinky town of Janesville, MN. Big deal, right? But the plot thickens up a bit when you realize that Ward Wendt, the guy who first put the doll in the window in 1976, is not only keeping mum about his reasons, but he has written them down in a letter which he then placed in a time capsule and buried in the park across the street. The capsule is not to be opened until 2176.

Like anybody will even care then. That house will be long gone by 2076. It's like a dare!

Anybody up for a roadtrip to Minnesota? Bring shovels and headlamps.

* * *

While writing this, I was listening to They Might Be Giants' Flood, a work of deranged genius that exceeds even Ward Wendt's, and I began wondering just what that bluebird nightlight looked like. (If you know the album, you know the one.) Well... I think I found it.

In Which Writers Are Speakers.

Multiple thanks to Mike Whybark, whose blog directed me to Journalista just in time to discover that one of my favorite comic artists was coming to town this week. Gabrielle Bell has no real website that I can unearth, but her journal comics are among my favorite of the genre. I love her sense of humor and the understated way she draws.

The other night at Reading Frenzy, she used an ancient slide projector to show/tell us an unpublished story, "My Affliction." It was a meandering narrative "based on actual events" that involved giants, levitation, foul-mouthed magpies, a houseboat with a crow's nest and waterslide, and miraculous acne cures. She did different voices for the different characters, and barked and squawked for the dog and bird. It was extremely entertaining. Then she signed my copy of Lucky and made a little sketch in it (of me!), and I went home so very happy.

* * *

Earlier that day, I got to hear a published novelist speak to some college students about writing and stories. It was... eh... it was okay. The most interesting part of the lecture, for me, was the two stories of the Hanging Doll.

Apparently, in some small town in Minnesota, there is a big white farmhouse right next to the main road, and all the cars slow down when they drive past it. They slow down because, in the attic window of this farmhouse, you can see a battered antique doll strung up by its neck. When this writer guy was in college, his friends took him by the house and told him this story about it:

A long time ago, there was this girl who lived in that house, and she was what people politely refer to as "special." She had this doll she always carried with her everywhere she went, and she never spoke a word. Everyone treated her like a freak; kids laughed at her and adults whispered about her. One day, when she was maybe 16 or so, her mother couldn't find her... she looked for her upstairs, she looked for her downstairs, and finally she found her in the attic. The poor girl had hanged herself, and the doll that was her only friend lay beneath her feet. Well, after the funeral, her heartbroken parents used the very same rope she had hanged herself with to string up her beloved doll in front of the window, so that the town would always remember what their cruelty had done to a poor innocent girl.

That story got around; a lot of people in the area accepted it as truth. But years later, the guy went back to research the story, and he found out this instead:

Once the owner of the house was reading an article in National Geographic, and it had a picture of some house in Mississippi where there was a doll hanging in the window. And he said, "You know what? It would sure be cool if I hung a doll in the window of my house." And so... he did.

Then the speaker asked for a show of hands: how many of you found the first story more compelling? And most of the audience raised their hands. But I didn't. And while he went on to make some points about humanity's need for story and yadda yadda, I spent the next several minutes thinking about why.

The first version was a standard-issue ghost story. It was too pat,* too heartstring-yanking to be believable. It left no loose ends; it was in itself a resolution, a closed compartment.

The second version was an open door, a crossroads. It left a hundred questions unanswered: Why did the doll-hanger think it was cool? What kind of guy does this sort of thing? What was it about hanging a doll that appealed to him? What did he think would happen as a result? Did he know about the urban rural legend, and if so, did it make him laugh? Did he start the legend himself? Were his motivations really as simple as they seemed?

And why was there a doll hanging in a window in Mississippi? Do they tell stories there about a girl who hanged herself? Are there other dolls hanging in other windows elsewhere? Could this catch on, start a Hanging Doll movement? Is there already a Hanging Doll movement, of which we urban dwellers are blissfully ignorant? What does that say about our culture? What does it all mean??

Now that's what I call compelling.

*No offense to Pat, who is entirely credible.

In Which They All Lived Lamely Ever After.

Yesterday was a landmark of sorts, the conclusion of what has become an annual tradition. Yesterday I finally finished that first interminable novel of the year.

Here is what happens: While making travel plans for the holidays, I pick a nice thick novel I've been looking forward to reading. I read some of it on the plane, and maybe some while I'm wherever I've traveled to. But not much. Then I come home and I've got a ton of pages left on it, and I nibble away at it before I go to sleep at night, and it lasts for weeks and weeks.

I have got to stop doing this. It's no way to read a novel.

But I was looking at old reading lists, and I discovered I've been doing it since 2004. Whether or not it's a good book, once I get well into January, I just bog down.

So I'm blogging to remind myself of this New Year's resolution -- not for the present new year, but for all future New Years' seasons: I will only begin short novels. Fat books are fine for other times of year, but not for January.

The book I just finished is Little, Big by John Crowley, and I cannot under any circumstances recommend it (though if LibraryThing reviews are any indication, it has quite a following). It's the story of an American family that lives on the borders of Fairyland -- a concept which surely has a lot of potential. But the narrative never really engages with either reality or fantasy, only wanders around in a sort of haze between (though I don't think there should really be a haze between, but bright-dark perilous wonder). And the characters spend pretty much all their time just being passively confused; no one confronts, no one demands, no one can ever say what they're thinking but just pussyfoots around it, hoping that their listener will hear the words they're not saying. And, because the fairies are always looking out for their pet family, everything happens for them exactly as it was predestined to do from the very beginning, without any real effort on the part of the humans. This is not only boring, but runs counter to rule #1 of fairy tales, which is that things can go terribly wrong. You can wander off the path in the woods and get lost forever; you can snub an animal or deny an old woman's request and get your quest cursed to failure. Here, nobody could step wrong even if they tried (though some of them did try, in a halfhearted fashion): fairy tale bumper bowling.

Anyway, it feels good to have finished it. (Don't ask why I can't just put a novel down when I'm not enjoying it; I haven't figured that one out yet.) Now I am reading about what sailors used to eat, and a friend's draft novel.

In Which Blogger Vexes Me, and the Secret Project is Revealed.

Thanks for the comments on New vs. Old Blogger. It's apparent from your feedback that the new version, though officially out of beta, is still more buggy than I'm comfortable with.

It really only came up because of the aforementioned top-secret internet project, which is a group blog, which I'll tell you more about in a second. See, Blogger's group blogs can be either Old Blogger or New Blogger, but not both; if you happen to be using one then you can't participate in the other and vice versa. Also, you can't have an Old Blogger blog and a New Blogger blog at the same time.

While this wouldn't bother most people, it's disastrous if you're trying to start a collaborative blog. Either only Old Blogger users can contribute, and nobody new to Blogger can join (because new users are automatically funneled into New Blogger) -- or only New Blogger users can play, and anyone who wants to join has to upgrade. Because of the number of core contributors who are still happily using Old Blogger, the blog's editor decided to stick with the former option for the time being (a choice I obviously support).

I've been a devoted Blogger fan for six years now, but the way they're handling this whole transition is lame, especially in that some people are already being forced to make the switch. I understand that it's necessary to move everyone over to the new model at some point, but can we at least make sure it all works first?

Anyway, now that I've got my grousing out of the way: The Suggestions is the collaborative blog in question. It was inspired by shopping blogs, but aspires to be something more. Exactly what that something is remains to be seen as it takes shape over time. It's still a little wide-eyed and stumbly; I'm not even sure the RSS feed works properly yet. But you can have a look, if you like.

(My original plan was to include an invitation to potential contributors in this announcement, but that's sort of moot now... unless you're an Old Skool Blogger user. In that case, if this looks like something you'd like to be part of, drop me a line.)