“Because you are defined not by life's imperfect moments, but by your reaction to them. And because there is joy in embracing - rather than running from - the utter absurdity of life.”
When I wrote about all the books Becky and I were giving away at our wedding, I compared Chelsea Handler to David Sedaris. For months now, I've intended to write all about the sexist literati who heap accolades on Sedaris while dismissing Handler as a vulgar TV star with some hit memoirs. I put it off because my heart wasn't in it. As promising a start as My Horizontal Life was, Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea didn't measure up. And I still haven't read Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang past that first tear-inducing (from laughs!) story.
Reading Carol Anshaw's "Carry the One" made me an instant fan. Here's why:
Whatever element causes romance to flare was simply not present in the air between them. This was a huge relief to Alice. Romance no longer looked like so much fun, more like a repetitive stress injury - beginning with Maude, but now also including all the failed and pathetic attempts to replicate that constellation of emotions with someone else. She could measure this past effort in all the underwear she had left behind in apartments, all the bottles of pricey wine she had brought to dinner, all the recitations of bad childhoods and adult disappointments she had earnestly listened to. Sometimes she made lists in her head, little catalogs of experience. The first list was, of course, all the women she had by now slept with. Taken individually, they seemed, at their various times, to hold the possibility of lasting love. As opposed to now, so far down the line, when they could only be looked at in accumulation, as one then another fool's errand. An offshoot list to this was the figure for how far she had gone for sex. (Thirteen hours on a flight from Chicago to Tokyo then back to Chicago the next day has held the top spot for quite a while; she might never better this.) Books she had read to get into somebody or other's bed (The Four-Gated City. The Fountainhead. Linda Goodman's Love Signs. Women Who Run with the Wolves.) Terrible music she had listened to because it was someone's idea of a mood enhancer. (Hall & Oates. Holly Near. George Winston. The Carpenters. Celine Dion.) Topics in which she had feigned interest during the short term (Juice fasts. Rugby. Celtic Dancing. Bikram Yoga). The longest list was the kinds of tea she had drunk in moments structured around the pretense that tea drinking was the reason for being in this or that cafe (Pergolesi, Kopi, Cafe Boost.) or kitchen, or side by side on this or that futon or sofa or daybed, sipping. (Earl Grey. Lapsang Suchoung. Gunpowder. Rooibos. Sleepytime. Morning Thunder. Seren-i-tea. Every possible pepperment and berry. Plain Lipton.) There was a stretch of time when tea became fetishized for her for being so linked with sex and romance, so reliable a harbinger of one or the other. She could scare herself with the renewable ingenuousness implied by this catalog. Still, the alternative - the development of an acidic cynicism - seemed worse.
Anyone who writes like that, you should read. Pulling it out of context like this might lessen it's impact, but I hope not. Anshaw articulates the character's struggle to fight the ennui of beginning another relationship, in such a specific voice, and blends it perfectly into the run of Alice's thoughts before and after this passage. It's masterful work. I don't know how someone creates an actual novel without a narrative thread, how an author manages to create plot out of distinct pieces spaced so far apart, but it's something you should experience.
I often forget how special Books & Books is. Every bookstore is not minutes from South Beach or Venetian Pool. Every bookstore does not get shoppers like Sir Paul McCartney, Michael Moore, and Shakira. Every book store does not host author appearances with Bill Clinton, Barbara Walters, and Shaquille O'Neal.
Does Clinton do candid shots? Of course not. . . only if you're Becky Quiroga.
Yet there's a dark side to the celebrity-studded bookselling lifestyle, one you've probably never heard about but which claims the good moods of half a dozen booksellers a month.
Don't see it? Let's take a closer look.
Yes, that's right: autograph theft.
If Shaq knew people were doing this to his books, he'd go Punisher.
I first came across this phenomenon when Gina and Dann Gershon visited for their book Camp Creepy Time in 2007. For a few years, selling signed copies online became a lucrative business for us (if you're interested in a signed copy, email me; I'll hook you up).
I can't find my picture of Gina Gershon dressed as a naughty nurse for the appearance, so enjoy this instead.
Apparently, Gina Gershon's autograph is worth money on its own and paying $16.99 for the hardcover children's book would blow the resale margin all to hell. It's much easier to take a razor and slice her signature out, making the book unsellable and killing our sale in one shot. Thanks, asshole.
Since then, we've found slashed copies of Jerry Rice's Go Long, Alonzo Mourning's Resilience, Elizabeth Berkley's Ask Elizabeth, and Condoleezza Rice's No Higher Honor. Apparently, sports figures, people with the last name Rice, and people from the movie Showgirls are high-risk groups.
Why not just steal the book altogether? Sure, it's easier to sneak a piece of paper out the door but I think the real reason is that the thief likes to rub our faces in it. There's a place in hell reserved for this perpetrator (perpetrators?) wherein paper-thin slices of skin are removed from portions of his/her body over the course of years. S/he will plead for death but find none.
But that's just my opinion. In the meantime, I'd like to catch this asshole in the act. It would almost be worth him doing it, just to catch that asshole doing it.
Over the days that followed, his pain became increasingly familiar to him. It would come over him while he was reaching for the push-buttons on his bed or crossing the floor to the bathroom, when he was watching the sun bounce off the TV, watching the rain leave its cat’s paws on the window, a response he realized he’d been waiting for all along, as if he and his wounds were having a conversation at bedtime, interrupted by long moments of insensibility. Oh, yes. Where were we? You were asking me a question, weren’t you? He did not court the sensation, but he did not shrink away from it, either. Whenever he felt it diminishing, a brief feeling of regret settled over him. The fact that he was healing meant that he would be returning to his real life soon.
-Kevin Brockmeier, Illumination.
I copied that wonderful quote on pain from the mighty Kevin Brockmeier’s Illumination because it spoke to me. Every anniversary of the accident, the rainy season has passed and the worst of my pain with it. Rather than struggling to cast my mind back, I decided to record those complaints so I’d have some fresher memories. It also helps me keep my complaints to myself.
Friday, July 15th, 2011 - It’s a restless day for that creature. You know what it looks like, the thing which lives inside your thigh, mouth wrapped around the end of your femur where it meets your hip: at the end of The Incredibles, Jack-Jack morphs into a little demon of flames and big teeth. The end of your femur rests in it’s mouth like a dog sleeping with a chew toy. The heat tingling from this creature’s mouth is like your nose in the corner of your vision, always there but forgotten unless you think about it.
Then a movement you’ve made a thousand times startles it for some reason. It’s not quite awake, but it still bites. Once, twice, three times, before settling back into that low heat.
Monday, July 18th - The aching bones in your leg bring to mind a rotten tooth. Not a fresh nerve jangling pain, but something brittle you’d see in a skull in a museum. No longer a tool for biting, but an object to gingerly ease from place to place.
This is not the case, obviously, but it feels so true you actually test holding your entire body with your leg. You push up and down a few times for good measure, proving your leg is strong, solid, that the weakness is all in your mind. Even this doesn’t convince you. Your hollow bones ache like buzzing filament in a lightbulb, warning you to tread softly on what’s left.
Thursday, July 21st - It’s a day to lean forward in your chair because of your rib, the high one toward your back. You’re a child, and a cruel adult is digging a thumb and forefinger into your back and side like a pincer. The angle makes your hip worse, of course, so you lean back after a time. Since most your day is spent in a chair the day passes this way, moving the pain back and forth between your hip and your rib.
Friday, July 22nd - Your rib, the low one this time, toward the front. It’s like sleeping on a fold-out cot, the metal hinge digging into your side. You forget it’s there, and you slouch. The weight of your upper body pushing down increases the annoying pressure into a deep throb.
You straighten up, which is fine. You shouldn’t be slouching anyway.
Wednesday, August 23rd - Nothing which cut through the rush of work and wedding prep severely enough to report for a month, which is good. A day with no relief, which is bad.
No standing position is comfortable, no sitting position is comfortable, laying down relieves the worst of the aches but it’s not an option. Grit your teeth, get through it, hope tomorrow is better.
Thursday, August 24th - The day begins with some kind of object left inside your left buttcheek, something shaped like one of those trivets you leave on a stove for resting spoons while you cook.
As the day progresses, the object moves south. It rests against your hip socket, then in your knee joint, and finally your ankle. The ankle and knee pain always mystifies you. Nothing happened to your ankle or your knee. Supposedly getting in an accident is like jumping off a building, six stories for sixty miles-an-hour, seven stories for seventy miles-an-hour, etc. Your legs absorb the shock of the car’s sudden stop. But that only applies to head-on collisions, and if it had happened with you, the pain should be in both ankles. Besides, what bruised bone still pains four years after the injury?
That’s another reason to keep the pain to yourself; the idea that it might be all in your head.
Friday, August 26th - Ribs poking the muscles in your back all day long at work. Hip at a level you haven’t felt in years. Blame it on the sudden temperature shift brought by the passing of hurricane Irene.
Thursday, February 23rd, 2012 (the Five-Year Anniversary) - You get the idea. I stopped at that point but I realize this year that cold snaps in the winter aren’t any picnic, either. Maybe last year’s rainy season was just extra-bad. Here are two images I didn’t use but which I also see on certain days: my hip as a sea shell, or a two-by-four blackened and brittled by fire.
Yesterday I helped set up Books & Books’ booth for this weekend's South Beach Wine and Food Festival. Lugging heavy cookbooks about led to a painful evening, but you know what? No one likes a whiner. I popped some Aleve and walked to Cub Scouts with Dylan.
I made a promise to myself after this accident that I'd never take my body for granted again. The aches last night were worth getting out of the chair and doing something physical. I should remember that.
Quotidian. Why use quotidian when mundane works just as well? Don't try citing some subtle shade of connotation, because there isn't one; they mean the same damn thing, except ninety-five percent of the English-speaking world could tell you what mundane means. Barring mundane, why not give everyday, commonplace, or ordinary a day in court? Too quotidian?
Using quotidian, you're not trying to tell us what the office is like, or describe Chester's workaday habits, or what materials an artist used for his pieces - unless you're Lionel Shriver, you're being deliberately obscure to add mystery to your piece, to make the reader work a little harder and invest more of herself.
I see the word all the time.
"Look out! The Quotidians are behind you!"
That, and words like it. Elegiac ("expressing sorrow") is one. Anodyne ("uncontentious or inoffensive") is another. To me, it's all grandiloquent ("Pompous or extravagant in language, style, or manner, esp. in a way that is intended to impress").
I think my vocabulary is better than the average bear's. If you're not David Foster Wallace, it ain't right to have me running for the dictionary (well, for Google). It's also no comment on my lack of education (I hope) because it's the same words over and over.
I remember a poster in my sixth grade English class, back in the days when it was called Language. Flying in the face of the Mighty Elmore Leonard (see Rule #3), this poster declared, "Said is Dead; Use These Instead." An alphabetical list of words which wouldn't make it past an AP writing class followed- Argued, Berated, Chided, Declared, etc. Seeing elegiac in four different books I've read in the last two months makes me imagine a spreadsheet handed out at creative writing programs across the country; Simplicity is Dead; Use These Instead.
Leonard says, "if it sounds like writing, re-write it." John D. MacDonald says, "Author intrusion is, 'Gee, Mama, look how nice I'm writing!'" John Dufresne says, "thou shalt not be obscure."
Look, I'm all for high fallutin language if it serves the voice of a piece. I like learning new words, particularly from a Shriver or a Wallace who knows how to use them. But most of the time these words just seem underlined. If you tell me your book is a "bildungsroman" rather than "a coming-of-age novel," you're proffering the secret MFA handshake.
McWriterface, listen closely: shake off all those fancy words you discovered pursuing your degree. They are weighty words and you need to build up your muscles before you can lift them properly. I see intransigent ("unyielding") and suddenly you're not trying to tell me a story, you're waving your MFA in my face. You can't expect editors to stop these words because they all have their MFAs, too. So it's up to you, Authorton.
Only you can prevent grandiloquence, Authorton... only you.
You never know when banana bread is going to be part of your life. It's out there, waiting for you to leave your bananas out too long, then you notice there's a little too much black on the peel. A few more days they'll be completely unappetizing but a few degrees shy of disgusting, and it'll be banana bread time.
I'd forgotten that the perfect banana bread recipe requires three bananas rather than the two I had. We have more bananas for smoothies but they're entirely too yellow. Because you can't will a banana to rot (what an awesome super-power - ripening), I immediately switched gears into muffin land.
I don't want to think about how much seeing the video above played into this decision. Do I make my own decisions, or do I just react to stimuli? Let's just admit that Adaptation is one of the most brilliant movies of all time and move on.
This is a rare real-time post. I can smell the muffins as I type. I woke up at five am, thought about my writing-work-dinner-wedding prep agenda for the day, and looked at the bananas in their now-or-never ripeness. My upbringing won over my longing to write. Wasting minutes I could've spent writing is intangible; throwing two perfectly usable bananas into the trash is real waste.
My posts have thinned out lately, and I expect them to get thinner. If you look over the proceeding, you can imagine why. I'm a bookseller. Unless you're Cory, there's not a lot of drama in the day-to-day. Well, maybe for those of us in the business. But Indie vs. A-Word, paper vs. ebook, dying industry vs. renaissance of the story - those posts can only go so far. I want to write about anything and everything.
The downside is that I sometimes end up writing about nothing.
I flatter myself that my thoughts on books, movies, parenting, relationships, food, and life are worth sharing. Still, I like to polish these thoughts up a bit before I share them. More importantly, especially for things I've started to write for reasons I'm not aware of, I want these posts to have some meaning. This sometimes means opening the same file dozens of times, revising, rearranging, looking for a point. Since Sweet with Fall and Fish doesn't have a unifying theme (apart from being the Official Blog of Aaron John Curtis), it's important to me that the individual posts try to have a point.
I have thoughts about Borders closing, and Amy Winehouse dying, and mass killings in Norway, but by the time I decide how I really feel and the best way to express it, those feelings are years out of date. Witness the post I've been working on about The Dark Knight and Tropic Thunder, movies which came out in 2008. Not because I just got them on Netflix, but because I wasn't sure how to express my feelings about Heath Ledger's death. After all that microscopic consideration, the challenge becomes making someone care. But I suppose that's always the challenge.
Did you know I saw Patti Smith at the Miami Book Fair International days afterJust Kids won the National Book Award? As part of letting the standing room only crowd know about the upcoming (at the time) OMiami! poetry festival, I was one of dozens who helped P. Scott Cunningham perform Arthur Rimbuad's Vowels, a random act of culture about which Smith said, "I've never seen anything like that."
I've mentioned Hilldawg from time to time? That's her holding the sign.
Did you know Patti Smith performed three songs during the reading, and that the last one became a sing-along? Did you know I loved Just Kids? Did you know I met Patti Smith? Of course you didn't. I worried too much about capturing the magic on the page, I procrastinated starting, then so many months had passed that it seemed silly to try and remember how I'd felt at all. There have been many nights like this I've passed over, but I offer this as an extreme example.
There's a lot of pressure in my life right now.
I'm getting married in 32 days. The marriage doesn't stress me at all, but there's a lot of prep involved in the event which marks the beginning, especially since this is DIY wedding.
Also, I know in this economy I should be pleased to have a job, but the work load I'm saddled with lately is ridiculous. Our week's run Thursday to Wednesday, and I'm over 32 hours for the week. These thoughts occurred while I was baking and I wanted to share, so I'm pushing back biking in to get this posted. I'll probably take Wednesday off to be with Dylan - Becky and I are taking turns watching him this summer since we can't afford camp or daycare - but I can't be sure. I could live in my office and work there every waking minute and it would take half a year to get on top of things, and even then I probably wouldn't be on top of things because they'd find even more for me to do. Grawr.
Finally, I've had a setback in my writing life. The mighty Carl Lennertz has left Harper Collins to become CEO of the North American branch of World Book Night. This is excellent news for the world of books which is semi-devestating to me personally.
As I've written my stories and taken time polishing my novels, it's always been in the back of my mind that my first published essay was a given (I've had pieces published online and in print, so I guess I mean published by the Big 6). I know I acted like it wasn't, but I was fooling myself. I'm glad I chose not to shout State by State from the roof tops, but I no longer have that foot in the door, that significant set of eyes which has looked at my work and deemed it worthy and which invites prospective agents and magazine editors to do the same. I'm back to square one.
In some ways, it's good. It gives my morning writing time more focus. With the help of my writers group, I am polishing four or five of my best stories until they will knock a magazine editor on her ass, so that she'll share the story with her readers, and I'll have a nugget of something to put in my cover letter to an agent, something more substantial than hopes and dreams. I need a credit. As Laura Munson writes in This is Not the Story You Think it Is, "You can't put good rejection letters on a resume."
What this doesn't bode well for is Sweet.
Of course this comes as my gradually-increasing readership reached its zenith in July. I should be writing more to keep you guys coming back, but something's got to give. I'll try to take a day to myself (if I can find it) and automatically schedule a bunch of stuff I've been tinkering with so it looks like I'm active while I take a break (or maybe it will be like today's post: write it, look for glaring errors and hope I didn't miss any, then publish post). Just because I don't see the point doesn't mean you won't, right? Reading is a relationship, and finding a piece's moral and sharpening it to a point is just me trying to bully your reaction. Of course, you might just get nothing but this for a while. We'll see.
Meanwhile, WLRN's Under the Sun released a CD of the last Lip Service event.
"What's this? A CD of a live Lip Service event recorded for broadcast by Under the Sun?"
"And who is that at #5? Why, it's me. Remember when I freaked out over the edits...
Wait, I never blogged about this, either? Fuck me."
As I sat in Books & Books cafe, reeling from the realization that Carl Lennertz left Harper Collins before he could publish me, a favorite customer approached and told me he enjoyed hearing me on NPR. Co-workers told me they'd heard and enjoyed me on the way in to work. It's the only thing that kept me from a meltdown that day.
Since then, strangers have come to the bookstore looking for me. One asked, "Which one of you is Aaron?" while I happened to be there. She didn't shop, but just stopped off on her drive home to tell me how much she enjoyed the piece (thankfully, I wasn't in the buying office at the time). Customers have congratulated Becky on her upcoming nuptials (which I mentioned in the Q&A after the reading). Apparently, I also "sound cute" on the radio. I feel like my writing career is foundering, but more people are aware of me than ever. It's fairly surreal.
So take heart. Even if you don't see much of me here in the coming weeks as I prepare for my nuptials, you may hear me on the radio.
And the muffins? They smelled better than they taste, but they are solid, moist, and they put two rotten bananas to good use. Here's to a morning well spent.
I didn't find what I was looking for when I Googled Cara Hoffman hates men, but I did leave an internet trail to her blog.
She wrote a post about it called Cara Hoffman Hates Men. In the comments, "Mike D" actually characterized my search correctly. I've added emphasis to his remarks below:
I agree with your essay and am impressed that you're able to respond to what appears to be annoying ignorance so calmly. However, there's something else going on here. Google Analytics. The idea of judging someone's opinion by their internet searches sounds pretty dangerous. The thing about "Cara Hoffman Hates Men" is you don't really know the intent of the person who entered that search. How many were interested in refuting the idea or agreeing? You can't tell what occurs in the mind by one's computer history.
Cara Hoffman responded thusly:
Reasonable point Mike D. I'll try to consider the benevolent reasons one might research cara hoffman hates men.
I almost posted a comment but in the end I chickened out. Probably because the same post mentions searches for nude photos of her. Also, I felt guilty and stupid. I picked the wording; no one suggested it. I was afraid of what that says about me.
As Hoffman writes when embracing hatred of people who commit violence against women, "So Much Pretty didn’t get written in a state of graceful acceptance of the yearly murder of thousands." It was stupid to search for backlash against a book with a feminist bent when we live in a culture that supports rape and fetishizes dead women. Look around; there's backlash everywhere.
As a side note, I have to wonder if I was the only one who searched that term.
Google analytics tells me that second only to "Sweet with Fall and Fish," folks find my blog by searching the phrase "Za Za Zoo." As Sex and the City is so popular, that makes sense (although, as I pointed out, Carrie Bradshaw actually spells it Zsa Zsa Zsu, so a true SATC fan would never find SwF&F). Yet there's one I can't understand, and that's "John Cusack Fish." What does that even mean? I have no idea, but six people have Googled it and found my blog.
Sweet Readers, you've heard me sing the praises of So Much Prettybefore. Now check out The Huffington Post, NPR, Jack Cameron, and Reading for the Joy of It. There are many more blog posts out there about the book, but those are my favorite. And the more copies she sells, the more likely she is to have a second book.
I think my story is not something to wrap up with a bow and hand over. Not to you and not to anyone.
If you’ve read Diana Abu-Jaber in the past then you’re anticipating Birds of Paradise like the rest of us who are already fans. If you haven’t read her before then I envy you; you’re about to discover your next favorite author.
Abu-Jaber uses imagery like a poet. She puts phrases together that are as delicious as the food she describes. She creates with words as few writers can, making you smell the backyard foliage, feel the clammy air on your skin, nestle inside the setting.
It gets so hot out there, the sun melting the thick bright air into orange honey, she just wants to curl up and sleep out her life.
For some authors, a gift for lyricism means the story is lacking. With Birds of Paradise, Abu-Jaber gives us a compelling story in the Muirs, a family living in the “aftermath” of a crisis - daughter Felice ran out when she was thirteen years old. But Felice refuses to disappear completely, which means that even years later the crisis is ongoing, and the degree of pain her family feels depends on the week. Birds of Paradise reopens old wounds, examines mid-life struggles, and invites us to watch as the Muirs address wrongs both real and imagined.
Abu-Jaber presents her character's doubts, dubious choices, and self-defeating behavior without judgement. It makes them all the more real, and sympathetic, even when their choices drive you crazy. Abu-Jaber's deft touch with their shortcomings gives the Muir's struggles for grace a humanity and beauty that you don't often find in fiction.
John Updike said, "The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding." I don't believe people who say they "hate" New York City. I refuse to accept their statement because it tells me we will have little in common, and finding common ground is what life's all about.
I've visited New York City natives a few times over the years, friends I went to college with who either came to Syracuse University from NYC or who moved there afterwards. This last trip for BEA made me realize their limitations in playing host (and my own in bringing friends and family to Miami); they showed me their New York, but I never really experienced the city as a newcomer. I wanted to wander, to find someplace and dip inside, to stand on the subway as a jangle of nerves because I could never quite be sure I'd taken the right route until I magically ended up where I wanted to be.
The first morning, Becky and I walked from the Holiday Inn to the Javits Center. We stopped at a corner convenience store-cum-deli with a latin dude at the flat-top and a middle-eastern dude behind the registers, guys who only need to hear "a breakfast sandwich with egg and cheese" and "coffee with lots of cream and sugar" to give you a downright delicious meal to start your day, and the best bagel you've ever eaten.
Eating great for cheap is part of what makes New York City cool, more than the accents or the stories you hear strangers exchange in the street, yelling over traffic like they're not sharing something intensely personal (people from LA and Miami seem to think the addition of a cell phone makes them superior to New Yorkers, like yelling dirty laundry into a phone is more refined than yelling it into a face). Even better, every place that catches your eye has a story. Using the criteria that I can't stop myself if I tried, I realize I'm only truly addicted to two things - reading and writing; I'm all about story.
Becky and I stopped at a bakery on impulse, one with a name like Hilda's Bakery (I've searched the internet like Cyber Sam Spade but there are about a billion bakeries in Manhattan and I've delayed this post long enough). We walked in and saw a big-boned black woman and a flamboyantly gay man behind the counter. We assumed Hilda was a figure made-up to sell baked goods.
Then we saw three framed black-and-white photos by the register, and a fourth frame filled with long-hand notepaper, faded by time. Turns out the woman in the photos is Hilda, and the notepaper is one of her original recipes. All of the recipes they use at Hilda's Bakery are, in fact, Hilda's. And the baby in photo number two? That's the current owner, also known as Some Chick From CSI.
(You'd think with that much information, the internet would give up a name. The BBBW who rang us up even flashed the actress's headshot, and I can't remember who it is. Damn.)
How good were these cupcakes? After stuffing our faces with cupcakes Becky and I tried to leave twice. We returned both times to buy more cupcakes. They were that good. Meanwhile, passers-by kept ducking in to critique pastries they'd eaten earlier in the day. The employees and the regulars knew each-other by name, and the employees obviously were having a lot of fun. It made me wish I lived there so I could familiarize myself with Hilda's entire menu, to form opinions I could shout in passing on the way home.
"Hilda's Bakery," Carnegie Deli, Hell's Pizza Kitchen, that no-name corner store with a breakfast counter or the half-dozen other places we dipped into, we saw nothing but cheer amongst New Yorkers. The New York Sneer - particularly post 911 - is like Big Foot. It's legendary, told so often it must be true, but it's doubtful you'll ever see it in person. Plus, the stories behind these places? Forget about it. Fuggedabboutit. Fuhgeddabowtit.
The hook for My Year with Eleanoris that Noelle Hancock got fired, panicked, and got inspired by Eleanor Roosevelt, in the form of a quote written on a chalkboard at a coffee shop: "Do one thing every day that scares you." So Hancock decided to face the things which scared her most - skydiving, swimming with sharks, working in a funeral home, interviewing ex-boyfriends, etc.
When People magazine asked what was the hardest thing she did, Hancock didn't hesitate.
"Hands down, stand-up comedy," she said.
I haven't read this one, but it caught my eye because I love standup comedy. Done well, it's a great evening. Done wrong, it can make you question your whole existence. Comedians who do well are killing, while comedians who fail are dying. Clearly the stakes are high, and you can take it from a woman who has experience, that this:
Noelle Hancock had such an irrational fear of sharks that swimming in pools made her nervous, but she still picked performing stand-up as scarier than "going nose-to-nose" with a shark. Which is why hecklers should be shot.
Talent must be a fanatical mistress. She’s beautiful; when you’re with her, people watch you, they notice. But she bangs on your door at odd hours, and she disappears for long stretches, and she has no patience for the rest of your existence: your wife, your children, your friends. She is the most thrilling evening of your week, but some day she will leave you for good. One night, after she’s been gone for years, you will see her on the arm of a younger man, and she will pretend not to recognize you.
Ushakovo – The Courtyard Hound, the fictional book David Benioff’s Kolya (Nikolai Alexandrovich Vlasov) is writing in City of Thieves
I rarely experience professional jealousy. I might read a Joe Hill story that's so genius I wish I'd thought of it first, or a lush David Mitchell novel that makes me realize I'll rise to the top level of my ability and still be looking up at him, but the reading experience doesn't plunge me into despair. It energizes me, feeds me, shows me ways I can explore my own work.
Then, there's David Benioff.
City of Thieves is so, so good. I pulled the above quote because it's a delicious metaphor, a tribute to the language and a joy to read. It gives you an idea of his talent, but it can't tell you how good the book is. It's so good that you have to wolf it down in huge gulps. It's so good that any fiction about World War II puts me off and it's still one of my favorites. It's so good that a passage like the one above doesn't even make it into the "real" book (okay, you could argue that it's Benioff's way of getting around one of writing's basic tenets: Slay Your Darlings. It's great but it has no place in the actual narrative, so he throws in this book-within-a-book to give it a home. Did you make that argument? Well, congratulations; you hate fun). But City of Thieves didn't make me jealous. This did:
That's the author photo on the dustjacket of Benioff's first novel, The 25th Hour. Like many, I read City of Thieves first. The 25th Hour isn't quite as good, but it's got style and story to spare (and shouldn't a writer improve as s/he goes along?). It's from the Elmore Leonard School, where character drives everything, and dialog reveals all. It's literate fiction pumped up for the thriller genre, which makes it a unique experience. He delves into these men's heads-
You know what? Just read it.
Halfway through, I was enjoying the book so much I had that moment of wondering what the dude who wrote it looks like. Once more, it was this guy:
Hey, ladies. I call this one "smoldering."
Suddenly, The 25th Hour's descriptions of the uber-gorgeous Monty didn't seem so far-fetched. Ed Norton plays him in the movie, which makes no sense. I was picturing Ian Somerhalder while I read, which brings us to my gripe; David Benioff is too good-looking to be so talented. He's rich, too. Bottom line? Fuck that guy. You might argue that no author looks as good in person as they do on a dustjacket. Sometimes you're right. Many times, in fact. Authors are human, like the rest of us. Some of us are photogenic, some of us aren't. Those of us who aren't photogenic don't have the luck to always be caught at a good angle in the right light. Take Benioff. That author photo is way old. In fact, he grew up and eventually became the hideousness that is this:
It's sad that I'm so beautiful. Wah.
Poor Benioff, trapped in the ivory tower of his gorgeousness, dismissed as a cinematic author turned screenwriter by literary snobs. He's probably forlorn because with that puss, he'll never be taken seriously enough to win a Booker Prize or a Pulitzer. I'll bet he cries himself to sleep every night while he's banging Amanda Peet on top of a pile of cash. Seriously, fuck that guy. And when's his next book out?
BEA is the biggest trade show in the industry. Bookended (ha-ha) by training and workshop days with IndieBound and the Independent Booksellers Consortium, you've got three days where all the heavy hitters and wannabes come to wheel, deal, and talk up their latest offerings - be they books, t-shirts, or software.
There are also special events around the city. From Random House Children's Books' party aboard an aircraft carrier, to breakfasts with authors, to cocktails at Ground Zero with Globe Pequot, there are dozens of things to choose from, often four or five a night. They used to feed us at these things, but industry belt-tightening means a scattering of appetizers and plenty of booze. This is the time for a lot of naturally bookish folks to cut loose in the big city; Booksellers Gone Wild.
I've stopped doing author "breakfasts." I can deal with a boxed wrap and a can of soda for lunch, but a pile of stale pastries in the center of a table and all the coffee you can drink does not a breakfast make. Sure, BEA "breakfasts" have the best book giveaways, but until they bring back bacon and eggs, or change the name to Coffee Author Chat, I'm done. They are not breakfasts. NOT! BREAK! FASTS!
Ahem.
If you're lucky enough to work for a major independent like Books & Books, the events come to you.
Norton invited me to a lovely dinner at Tarallucci e Vino with Diana Abu-Jaber. I just finished Birds of Paradise last night and it was damned fine, five stars, but more on that later. Apart from it being bookstore related, Diana and I couldn't remember when or how we met. I've always felt privileged to know her because she's a great writer and a nice person. I've also felt a kinship with her because she grew up in Syracuse and she takes heat for not looking Arab enough, while I grew up in Syracuse and take heat for not looking Indian (or "Native American" la-dee-freaking-da) enough. The meal and the company - Norton folks, Diana's agent, and some other booksellers - were delicious, and I hope that Birds of Paradise is a huge success.
My other big dinner was thrown by Harper Collins in a private space at the Savoy to celebrate Wildwood, a gorgeous, rollicking romp written by Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy and illustrated by Carson Ellis. I'm only partway through but so far I'm loving it. I'm such a huge Decemberists fan that I recognized neither of them, and I keep combining their names into "Carson Meloy" when I talk about the book. But wine did flow, and good times and deliciousness were had by all.
Everyone at the dinner knew Becky - the Girl with the Pigeon Tattoo - and I couldn't help but feel that she should've had my seat. The folks from Harper introduced Betsy Bird as a future author, so we spent the whole time she sat next to me talking about her upcoming titles. When I got home, the magic of Google told me that Mrs. Bird is the most powerful children's book blogger on the planet ("You don't mean Fuse 8, do you?" Becky asked me. "Oh my God!"). If I was such a force, I'd announce it with every handshake. But that's me.
I figure doing a big three is good, so I'll mention the mighty Hillary Jordan's When She Woke. I realize now that while I've sung the praises of Mudbound in other places, my only mention at SwF&F is this squib. Criminal. So here's a segment from the opening chapters of Mudbound which shows you why you should read it:
When I think of the farm, I think of mud. Limning my husband's fingernails and encrusting the children's knees and hair. Sucking at my feet like a greedy newborn on the breast. Marching in boot-shaped patched across the plank floors of the house. There was no defeating it. The mud coated everything. I dreamed in brown.
Here's hoping When She Woke is huge.
Other memories of BEA include passing Flava Flav, meeting Laurent de Brunhoff, and Hellfire. You're not supposed to talk, tweet, blog, or take photographs at Hellfire, but I can't resist; Josh Ritter bought me Budweisers!
I haven't read this but it felt appropriate; I'm sure reading it would help, but then how would you see into my head?
I thought writing those posts would help my emotional state and I wasn't wrong. My emotions feel life-sized again. Hurtful, but manageable. Now comes the fun part: waiting to see whether I have more pain and anger to to express. If so, how will it present itself? Finally, can I resist taking it out on those closest to me?
I probably have more pain, tears, and anger. In fact, I'm sure of it. As Glen Duncan writes in The Last Werewolf, "Once you've stopped loving someone, breaking his or her heart's just an unpleasant chore you have to get behind you." Being on the receiving end of that treatment - especially over the course of months, to see this person you've loved so well for so long become completely indifferent to you - is uniquely unmanning.
I'm not worried about how these emotions bubble up because I've learned to see the symptoms. I'm also not worried about taking it out on my family, because Uncle Fester no longer waltzes into my mind, kicks his feet up, and makes himself comfortable. We verbally spar instead. Well, once we sparred for about half a day. The other times, I heard him open his mouth and was like, "Shut the fuck up, Fester."
And he did.
On a related note, I'm really looking forward to the new Mel Gibson movie where he talks to a beaver puppet to deal with his negative emotions.
Pictured: Me and Uncle Fester having a rational discussion
