An unsuccessful inventor can’t seem to avoid unsuccess.
(from McSweeney’s, Early Fall 2004)
Once again, the mysterious Wells Tower has dazzled me not just with twisting, wandering plotlines, but also with deliberate and sensual phrases. I encourage you, my peeping peeps, to peep this:
“Two human greyhounds in immaculate white jackets stepped from a restaurant door, hatchet heads swiveling in their fur collars, estimating the chill.”
I should really say something more about the writing, since I’m all canonizing all aggressive like, but no. It’s excellent. Read it, I suggest.
But who is this Wells Tower? Well, the “Contributors” section of this book tells us he’s a he, and that he’s working on a novel. A Google image search produces neither a picture of the author (meaning he has never, ever been photographed) nor a picture of the Wells Tower structure which supposedly stands near the Edgbaston Reservoir in Birmingham, England (so, like, nobody ever aimed a camera at that, either). How do I know there’s a Wells Tower over there in blighty? I don’t, but look: This guy thinks he was in it when he took a picture. Too bad he didn’t photograph the Wells Tower itself.
What else? wellstower.com is taken, but it’s only got a “coming soon” message. It could be about the author, or that putative tower, or for well stowers (which would be, I suppose, people who put their wells in sneaky places, so as to hoard water).
A Wells Tower, surely our Wells Tower, is or was a contributor to the Washington Post Magazine in some capacity. See?
Oh, wait, here‘s a picture of him plus an audio clip of him reading.
So much for mystery and excitement. The secrets have all been revealed, people. I bet you Bigfoot’s on MySpace. And the Loch Ness Monster’s got a blog. (Go ahead and find out for yourself whether these things are true, but send me no links, I am humorless, I am damaged goods.)
Here‘s a place where somebody really did some homework researching Wells Tower. Look, the guy was in a band called Hellbender. You may not be a yeti anymore, Mr. Tower, but I like your style nonetheless.
I just finished reading his short story “Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned”-its one of the most amazing short stories I have ever read. Everything about it gets to the raw core of human emotion. How passion and beauty is always confronted with hate and violence. The inevitability of experiencing love with pain. The small exstasies of being able to forcibly posses something that you desire that is not yours. How an innocent feeling is so strong in essence-causing unstoppable determination- can change a life into something filled with timeless shame, selfishness, and regret. It really exposed the soul behind all tragedy in life. In other words, its a good story!
Check out an interview with Wells Tower at http://www.wagsrevue.com
He talks a good deal about writing ‘Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned.’