To the Left of the Midwest

Last week I started a terrible rumour that I'd written a book, which felt really good at first because people kept saying "oh my god, oh my god, you've written a book!", but then it all spiralled out of control when everyone assumed it was a novel — that I'd actually sat down and managed to write something with a plot and characters and hundreds of pages and stuff. As if! I'm not starting my novel until I've finished organising my cutlery drawer, remember?

The book is called 'To the Left of the Midwest' and it's a collection of my photography and writing from the States. Here's a sneak preview of a few pages:



Some of the images will be on show at The Joinery gallery in Dublin next month. Most of the photographs are landscapes, taken from the windows of long-distance trains when I was wondering if I might be dead by the time I got to Memphis — and all the other things you're supposed to think about when you're by yourself on the road. This is what America looked like while I was wondering what it might be like to die in Michigan and Mississippi:





I'll be having an opening night at the gallery, where I'll be reading from the book, too (if I can work up the courage without drinking all the free beer by myself first). So, if you're in Dublin, I would really, really love you to come along and say hi. I wouldn't have done any of this without you, blonkettes!

The book is mostly made up of blog entries from the time — minus my overabundant use of semi-colons and some rather embarrassing casual racism that I have since edited out — and it all starts with this:

I want to make a film one day, set on the road in the American Deep South. I know, I know... everybody wants to make an American Deep South road-trip movie. That's the whole point of cinema, isn't it?

Jenna laughs. My script, she says, is less 'Deep South' and more 'to the left of the Midwest'. She's from Oregon and finds it funny that I'm writing about somewhere I've never been.

Jenna! Does she think Shakespeare ever actually went to Venice?

She just laughs harder — I'm comparing myself to Shakespeare again. Then she finishes her coffee, takes my pen, and draws a map of America on a paper napkin.