{"id":94,"date":"2022-02-05T23:57:23","date_gmt":"2022-02-05T23:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrisvreeland.com\/blog\/?p=94"},"modified":"2022-08-26T01:20:49","modified_gmt":"2022-08-26T01:20:49","slug":"20200-book-2-rain-after-midnight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisvreeland.com\/blog\/?p=94","title":{"rendered":"2022 Book 2: Rain After Midnight"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Don Skiles was my dad’s best friend.<\/em><\/strong> He died suddenly of a stroke at age 81 last May, and the whole world grew a little dimmer. He was an English professor, and author of one novel, poetry and 4 collections of short stories. I have looked on line for an obituary, but there’s nothing much out there, so I’ll write my own idea of one from my perspective, the kid of his best friend.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Book<\/a>
Cover Illustration by Don’s wife Marian Schell, who preceded him in death by several years.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Don Moved to San Francisco<\/em><\/strong> for the final time, from Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1976, while I was living with my dad during the long school break. Don, his wife Marian and a friend of theirs named Tim who was also an aspiring writer, stayed at my dad’s house for a couple months that summer while they got settled. I must have been 13. That summer was a time of constant uproarious laughter. Don was a lover of words – not just for their meaning, but simply the way they sounded. A funny-sounding word would set him off & his laughter would infect the entire house. Once we were perusing a map of Europe, and he pointed out the town name of Smolensk, which his simply found to be hilarious to say. No reason, just a hilarious sounding word. It was not a surprise to me to see that place-name listed amongst others many years later, when i read this book.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Smolensk, still fascinating Don by the way it sounds, umpteen years later. I felt like I was part of this story.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

I put on a Firesign theater album<\/em><\/strong> one day that he hadn’t head of before, & when they uttered the phrase “Trussrippers will be persecuted,” it put him on the floor gasping for air. I think we all ended up on the floor, laughing with him. I will always cherish this memory of a man who helped teach me to love words and language. Not only did he set an example for me as a writer, but he genuinely and uncritically encouraged me to write, and despite me being a kid, he never treated me like one. Inspired by him, I wrote some poems and character sketches, which he read with earnestness, and once said “I admire your writing.” His influence on me and my journey to create art is incalculable. I didn’t go on to write much, but everything I’ve ever put to paper has a bit of Don in it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3 of his books<\/em><\/strong> are still in print at Peleikenisis: Rain After Midnight<\/a>, the novel Football<\/a> and Across The Street From The Ordinary<\/a>. If you can find a used copy of Miss America or The James Dean Jacket Story, grab them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This book is about places<\/em><\/strong>, and his memories of them. Don has a simple way of telling you how it was, and transporting you there within a couple of paragraphs. I recall him being a massive fan of the Beats back in the 70’s – City Lights is his Sistine Chapel, and is mentioned reverently in a story here. There are also stories about his time in the Air Force in England, visits to Paris, his childhood & college years in Pennsylvania but it’s the stories about San Francisco that transport me in particular, because I was there & he gets them right. There’s obviously a lot of Brautigan in here – in fact, he name-checks him in this book twice. Don is a bit more matter-of-fact, though he possesses the same ability to write an entire novel in 2 pages.
My dad turns up, too. He finishes off a story about his early job in SF in ’62 called On Foot<\/em> with the final sentences Harry grinned, a grape posied between two fingers. “You fucking English Majors,” He said, and Popped The Grape into his mouth.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I may be biased here, but 5 of 5 thumbs up. 👍👍👍👍👍<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Addendum!<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

8-25-22<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was browsing through my book shelf a while back, and opened up my copy of the long out-of-print Miss America, Don’s first book, and found that he had left me a nice inscription that I had entirely forgotten about. II’ve been meaning to post this here for a while, and was finally motivated to do so by this nice MetaFilter post<\/a> about used book stores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Don Skiles was my dad’s best friend. He died suddenly of a stroke at age 81 last May, and the whole world grew a little dimmer. He was an English professor, and author of one novel, poetry and 4 collections … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisvreeland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisvreeland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisvreeland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisvreeland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisvreeland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisvreeland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":188,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisvreeland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions\/188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisvreeland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisvreeland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisvreeland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}