Joseph Riippi
In One Note, Gabriel Blackwell asks writers to talk about the book they are currently reading and why. One Note 011: Joseph Riippi, Cormac McCarthy, The Stonemason.
In One Note, I ask writers for just that: one note, a single paragraph, on what they’re reading right now.
Today’s note comes courtesy of Joseph Riippi.
I said to my wife this morning, I need a new copy of Blood Meridian. And then I spent the next two hours reading The Stonemason. It had rested next to that broken and bloated Blood Meridian, helped it to stand, maybe, or not. Now, writing this, Saturday afternoon falls. Rain in the alley behind the bedroom window makes a sound like my childhood neighbor-friend’s bike plowing gravel. I’m in bed with coffee and this play-in-five-acts, spinning it in my hand and jotting this on a notebook. I’ll type it later. I thought I’d read Stonemason before but I was wrong. The mason spins the stone and as it turns out—. Tomorrow is my birthday and my wife is taking me to Housing Works Bookstore for a spree. The statement that started this One Note before the rain began to fall was maybe the first thing I’d said for an hour or two. A quiet morning, excited morning. She was reading the newspaper, drinking tea. I was doing an audit of my McCarthy collection—eighteen inches of the Vintage paperback editions, the black with the grey stripes. Not unlike the Faulkners and Sartres on the shelf below, but a slightly scarier color. Los Angeles Raiders vs San Fran’s ‘Niners. In the last year of college someone gave me Cities of the Plain and at every bookstore I scanned for the Raiders’ covers. Somewhere in the readings I overlooked The Stonemason. Perhaps it was meant to rain that day and I’d gone outside instead and forgotten to read. This morning as it began to rain I wanted to reread Child of God; it seemed a worthy way to wait for new weather. Instead I got this new thing, elegant and harsh and somehow like a wet statue resisting rain and erosion. I’m not quite sure how else to say something about The Stonemason right now—the “irr-erodable-statue” simile seems to fit.
Joseph Riippi is author of the books The Orange Suitcase (2011) and Do Something! Do Something! Do Something! (2009), both from Ampersand Books. Treesisters, a 24-part poem, is forthcoming as a chapbook from Greying Ghost Press in 2012. Visit Joseph Riippi.com
