Authors · The ledger
Layout · the ledger
John Q. Public
Land, water, and the sentence a deed refuses to say out loud.
- From
- Tulsa, Oklahoma
- Writes in
- The Texas Panhandle
- Themes
- Place writing · Civic fiction · Essays
Layout sample. Not an author on the record, and not a title the house is offering. Use this page to judge the room, not the books.
The work, as a list
- No. S01The Section LineThe fence has been in the wrong place for forty years. Everyone preferred it that way.
Novel · Civic fiction
- No. S02AcreTwelve pieces on measuring land, and the people who live inside the measurement.
Essays · Essays
- No. S03What the Deed Left OutFive stories about paper that is correct and still incomplete.
Stories · Stories
Field notes
Essay · specimen
The Chain
A chain is sixty-six feet, and for a long time that was enough law for a fence. I learned the length before I learned why a neighbor would rather be wrong by four feet than be right in front of the county.
John Q. Public is not a writer on the Fiendish list. He is a layout, so the house can be looked at with more than one name on the door. The books under his name are invented for that purpose and are not for sale, review, or rights.
The shape he is standing in for is a surveyor who started keeping the stories the plat left out. He writes from a rented house at the edge of a county seat, where the courthouse is the tallest thing still open after five, and the arguments are about fences, wells, and whose name is on the paper.
His page is set as a ledger: the person stays in a column, and the work is a list you can scan. Jane A. Doe has the gallery. Richard Roe has the house page called On the record. Nicholas P. Leone has the writer sheet.