–Bob Dylan, “Nettie Moore”
It’s proving to be a very appropriate soundtrack to my story revisions. Gus, for her own special reasons, loved the sixties and has never stopped listening to Dylan.
Although I’m sure any of my major characters can be read as me-analogues, I wonder if this love of Dylan makes Gus a bit of an analogue of my dad? Not as he was, but as he might have been, unwed, unbred, wandering in the hills with his camera-lenses slung over his shoulder and his bad haircut like the guy in No Country for Old Men.
Gus is a rolling stone, no two ways about that; and she wants peace more than almost anything.
While my dad was very much for peace, I don’t think I ever figured out whether he believed it was possible. I suppose that is key. Gus, for her part, knows it’s not possible, and that is her cross.
