Our Guy, Their Guy

I’ve never read Huckleberry Finn. This has always caused me a considerable amount of guilt – guilt being a specialty I’ve spent far more time refining than my prose. I was always under the impression that the fact that I’d never read my own country’s National Author (capital letters, for certainly the title comes with a certificate, jacket sticker, theme song and the like) somehow reflected poorly on me because, well, I’m an American, and I like to write… Shouldn’t I have read our guy at some point?

However, I’ve come to realize an interesting phenomenon…. Today I was speaking to a friend at my gym – a Russian named “Geny.” I was discussing with him my great affinity for (as any of you who have ever read me… or met my cat… might have guessed) the greatest story of all time, Eugene Onegin. To this, Geny, despite the fact that he was likely named after the title character (Eugene = Yevgeny à Geny), responded that he’d never read Onegin. I was shocked–though I need not have been–for Geny is not actually even close to the first Russian I’ve met who has never read Pushkin’s classic. Still, it got me thinking… Do any of us actually read our national authors?

I guess I’d assumed that every Italian had read Dante; that every Frenchman had read Victor Hugo; Hell I figured even Jeremy Clarkson could probably recite a wee bit of the Bard.

Maybe I’m wrong. Though there’s another possibility. What if what outsiders consider to be another’s national identity-defining novel is not what said others would choose for themselves?

Some list tells me that Mark Twain is the American storyteller, and I don’t know. Not having read him, I’d perhaps put forth F. Scott Fitzgerald as my offering into that impossible debate.

I’ve often figured that maybe part of our difficulty in determining the Great American Writer is that Americans come from so many different places, that and also how we Americans love our hyphenated pasts. (I haven’t read Twain, but you bet I’ve read Joyce.) Now I see that glint in some of your eyes, “Ohhhh, McGrath… Fitzgerald… a love affair in shades of green… Now I get it.” But that doesn’t come close to explaining the guy I’d put second on my Great American Writer list: Ralph Ellison (whose Invisible Man unquestionably says as much about the American experience that 99% of us know as the sublime Gatsby does).

I don’t know what it is that tells me that those two have the Authentic American Voice, though I’m happy to explain why they each represent a voice which I not only find myself able to identify with, but also which I’d identify as American.

So, this has me thinking. Who is it that you consider to be your national author? What is it that you consider to be your national novel? I’ll venture one guess: There’s gonna be more than one answer for each.

A Second Goodbye to Robin Williams

Gerald, as always, bounded into the back room and said, “Holy Shit, I’m pretty sure Steven Spielberg is out front!”

It was Boston, we were in a relatively swanky shopping mall, but there was no reason for an Academy Award winner to be out on my sales floor. Still, perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps out of boredom, I set down my sandwich and walked out front with my beaming sales associate.

“There, there,” the usually far-too-cool seventeen year old blabbered as he pointed in the man’s direction.

I approached the heavyset man wearing a tan knit sweater. As I greeted him, he turned to me and, for a second, I could see why Gerald had been mistaken. The man who faced me had a graying lumberjack beard and soft, gentle eyes. He was not an Oscar winner. Not yet anyhow.

There really wasn’t a protocol on how to handle celebrity customers. Clearly, there were things not to do – no autographs (an archaic form of commemoration in the days before selfies), but no need to pretend not to know the person either.

I asked if I could help a man who was somehow made more serious by his facial hair.

“How about these?” he asked. “Any good?”

I answered that, yes, the shoes he’d selected were fine and, I believe, asked to measure his feet.

Returning moments later with a few pairs of shoes, I sat down in front of him on a stool and began unpacking the first pair of shoes. “In town for business or pleasure?” I asked.

“I’m here for work,” he answered.

“You used to work in my hometown as well,” I stated. When he arched his eyebrows, I mentioned that I had, only three months before, moved from Boulder, Colorado.

“Boulder,” he said with a broad smile. “I haven’t been there in years.”

“It hasn’t changed,” I answered as I laced up his right shoe. Of course, Boulder had very much changed, but the ‘Mork and Mindy house’ and even Rocky Mountain Records and Tapes were still there, just like in the opening credits of the show that made this man a star.

“I just moved here myself,” I continued as a laced up the other shoe. Another customer came in and sat down on the same bench. This forced Gerald back into the picture as my younger associate greeted and began helping this woman of about forty-five.  

Undeterred, my customer asked what had brought me to Boston, and I answered that I’d come to attend school. I’m relatively sure I mentioned that it was Harvard, I’m absolutely positive that I left out that it was night classes.

“These will be fine,” he said softly he stood up and smiled. “In fact, I’ll wear them.”

I pulled a few tags from the new Nike trail shoes and boxed up his old shoes as well. We said very little out of the ordinary at the counter – just some small talk that somehow failed to bury itself as deeply as these other memories have. As I returned the man’s change, I came out from behind the counter and handed him his shopping bag.

“It was really nice to meet you. You should get back to Boulder sometime.”

He smiled and shook my hand with his massive paw. “Good luck with school.”

“Good luck with your work as well.”

We said goodbye, and he turned to leave.

As I watched him leave my store another customer called for my attention. I sat this customer next to the older woman. Just then, the woman’s son came running into the store.

“Mom, mom, Robin Williams is shopping in the mall!”

Gerald and I smiled before being interrupted by something unexpected.  

“He is?” the woman asked excitedly. “Where did you see him? Where was he shopping? I’m almost finished here.”

Was he so great a chameleon?

Were “we” so sure of how he must have acted when not on stage?

In any event, the gentle, bearded man had gone completely undetected. That woman may still not know that she spent no less than fifteen minutes sitting shoulder to shoulder with an actor she clearly admired.

One year later, I was home – back in Colorado. Harvard didn’t take. I’d seen Robin Williams in the movie he’d been in Boston to shoot. I remember seeing the last show one night with a coworker. I remember attending the first show alone the next morning as well. Sitting there the second time, I allowed Good Will Hunting to truly affect me. It may still be one of my most vivid experiences at the movies. It is worth noting that the Academy of Motion Pictures also noticed Mr. Williams’ performance. I remember feeling joy when he won the award for a movie which had so shaken me. Good Will Hunting is a good film. Still, how much of its impact is down to my having been a terrified kid in that same city at the time that it was being made? I’m not sure. This story isn’t about that. This story isn’t even about saying goodbye. I’m grateful to say that I have a clear memory of saying goodbye to Robin Williams. A smile and that enveloping handshake…

I’m glad I got to experience the star. I’m even more grateful that I got to spend an afternoon with the man.

Farewell, Captain. Rest in Peace. 

A Cure for Writer's Block

It was Mr. Jagger who sang, “Relief, children, it’s just a song away, it’s just a song away.” Not exactly? Well I’m sure that's what he meant.

There really isn’t a writer who hasn’t faced what is commonly called Writer’s Block (or, if you are in, or are just leaving, your thirties – “That less stylish WB”). Indeed, Twitter is filled with more writers talking about writer’s block or the fact that they are writing than it is with much actual writing to speak of.

(At risk of tangentializing, if you are spending time telling the world, “I #amwriting,” you’re not. You #aretweeting. Writing is, well, writing, and one of the best ways to defeat writer’s block is sometimes to actually, well, write.)

Still, sometimes the words just aren’t there. What to do, what to do? For me the answer is simple: pick up a pen, some paper and my headphones.

Sometimes it’s all a question of which song I wish I would have written. This is a really long list, and it is always changing–and therein lies the cure. Each time I ask myself this question, I am actually checking in with wherever I’m at on that given day. I don’t often turn to Long December while basking in the sunlight of either summer or happiness. I don’t often turn to the Beach Boys while watching tears fall down a window or my own cheeks. “What do I wish had come from my pen?” tells us so much about where we are in every other part of our lives. “Which unchangeable situations do I presently loathe? Which of these are actually ripe for the response?” The answer to these questions is the stuff of novels–or at least 100% of mine to this point.

So, you’ve got your song. What now? Well here, dear scribblers, we live in a world of advantages. What once required a five disc changer (and the selected works of Jon Bon Jovi and I worked through a lot of drama when I was in college in this very way) can now be accomplished with iTunes or Google music.* Simply take said song and let Genius or Instant Mix take you on a journey. Sit back, arch your back and breathe deeply in the sweet smells of inspiration.

Now, some of you may be thinking, but you yourself argued that writing is, well, writing. Currently, if anything, we #arelistening. I agree. Here’s where the actual exercise comes in. Choose a song from the list. If you’re especially superstitious, decide on a track number in advance (Jon and I always meditated on the tenth song that was played at random). Take this song and either write the lyrics down by hand or print them from the net. I actually prefer the latter and it isn’t because I’m lazy. You see, I’m not as interested in how the lyric is sung. Like Hamlet, we’re all here for the words, words, words.

So say my song was Pink Moon by Nick Drake. It’s been stuck in my head and I may or may not know why (rewatching Young Americans for the fourth time on youtube*). I take that song, generate my Genius list and see that the tenth song on that list is Come Pick Me Up by Ryan Adams. From there I go online, grab the lyrics and copy them into a Word doc. Next, and this is really important, I change the spacing of the entire doc to triple and set the font to rather huge as well. From here, click print and you end up with something like this:

Before

Next, GET THE HELL AWAY FROM THE INTERNET. Take your paper and your pen and simply write your response to the lyrics. What does each line mean to you? Are there words which recall other words? Was there a time in your life when you first heard this line? Maybe you’ll fall for the phrasing or maybe you’ll wade into the simple nostalgia…

After

Either way, if you follow these directions with a pen in hand, the final score will always be the same: 

You 1 – 0 Writer’s Block.

Happy writing!

*Lest you fear a lack of full disclosure, I’ve never received anything from Apple or Google, neither of which I fear have ever read a word I’ve written. iTunes, in fact, is so horribly difficult to fund from abroad that I almost changed their name in this post out of spite.  

Leopold Bloom and Football, Oh My!

This past week, Bloomsday was celebrated by James Joyce enthusiasts across the world. The celebration is held annually on June 16, the day on which Joyce’s Ulysses takes place. While fond of Joyce, and currently reading Ulysses, I will admit that the holiday completely escaped my notice. I had even planned to write a blog about Bloomsday, only to see the day move right past me. The reason, quite simply was the World Cup.

Still, I wanted to write something about Joyce, and this got me thinking. Is there perhaps some connection to be made between my obsession with football (more on that word later) and Ulysses? The answer (quite fittingly if you’re one of the dozens of people who have actually finished the book) is Yes!

People come to Ulysses for a number of reasons. There are, astoundingly, some professors who actually require it, but we’ll deal here exclusively with those who choose to take on this behemoth of their own accord. The first reason why many at least consider reading Joyce’s masterpiece is their desire to read a book which routinely finishes at the top of any ranking of the top books of the twentieth century. The second reason some choose to read it is that, well, you haven’t. There is–no one should even try to deny it–a certain (massive) amount of snob value to tackling Ulysses. For those of you not aware of the details, I offer this simple list:

• Ulysses is written from multiple writing perspectives–with Joyce often changing technique completely from chapter to chapter.

• Its final chapter (or “episode”) is made up of a 4,391 word SENTENCE.

• It is a book considered so difficult that the author himself wrote two different study guides which instruct the reader what colors, bodily organs, art forms and symbols to consider while reading each chapter.

• And then there are the prereqs. We all remember prereqs from college, I’m sure. Well, Ulysses has its own impressive list.

Before I even unwrapped my copy of Ulysses, I journeyed from a thorough rereading of Hamlet through Joyce’s two previous novels (Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners) and finally, of course, to Homer’s Odyssey. The reading of these books ahead of time is not merely a suggestion. The outline of Ulysses, a book populated by characters from Portrait and Dubliners, one of whom very much resembles Hamlet, mirrors the Odyssey itself. I cannot fathom reading Ulysses without this background and, honestly, it wouldn’t be as much fun. The prereqs are where all of the AH HAH comes from and Ulysses is filled with such moments.

So how does one compare Ulysses to the World Cup? For me, it starts all the way back at the top of this post. People watch the World Cup for one of two reasons: because they are curious what everyone else is talking about or because of the dedication required to schedule the time to watch each and every match. The World Cup is similar to the Super Bowl, Daytona 500, Olympics and, fascinatingly, Wrestlemania in that one feels compelled to watch it whether one loves football or not.

And then there is that word, football. If you’re like me, an American that is, even insisting on the use of the word football carries with it a certain degree of arrogance. I watch football and find myself tweeting and discussing in the lingua franca of my fellow supporters (whatever language this is, for it is certainly not American English). I speak of pitches, kits and of being gutted. I’ve never watched a football game but I wake up at 4am KST to watch matches once or twice a week. For me, my ability to converse in football is as much a badge of honor as someone might feel when standing on a subway while reading Ulysses (which is terrifyingly almost a children’s book compared to Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake–if ever you see someone reading Wake in public, call the authorities and walk away slowly).

So we have the recurring celebration. We have the reasons one attends casually or maniacally. What does that leave? Ah yes, the prereqs.

There are two main times that I smile while watching football. One is when I see something that I’ve never seen before. The other is when I see something which I have seen before at a specific, notable time. The latter of these represents the AH HAH of football–and these moments can come not only from other football memories, but also from any other notable experience. Passes can remind you of both symphony and geometry and sportsmanship, especially at the international level, can cause one to reflect on world politics. (The World Cup stadium which hosted Bosnia and Herzegovina’s first ever World Cup match last week would not have held all of the people who died during the war which led to the formation of that country… Let that set in for a moment.)

These AH HAH moments are everything that I love about football, but they are also why no football movie will ever hit me the way Field of Dreams did. I don’t have the same long term relationship with football that I do with baseball. A United States match will never mean as much to me as watching the Yankees after 9/11 did. These pieces of nostalgia are so deeply rooted within us that even we know little about them until they come back around for seconds.

That’s why baseball will always be my native language. I am, however, delighted to consider myself bilingual with regards to sports, and enjoy speaking football a whole lot more than my native tongue these days.

What Makes for a Great Opener?

As some of you may know, I published my second book this week. It’s always a bit daunting when years of work go into something you’re just hoping someone might give a chance to. The first impression (well other than the cover, and that might be another blog for a coming week) is, of course, the opening line.

But what makes a great opener? I’ve now published two of them, and while they may or may not be great, I was certainly aware of the weight of how I chose to open each story.

For the record, my openers were these:

~ “So much of Connor’s and her story had been told through pivots.”  Enso

~ “Staring out at glittering lights, like those which once imprisoned me, I freeze. Once again, I freeze.” Bound in Neon

The point to this blog is not to debate whether or not you liked these lines. It is not even to debate whether you care for the others I’ve listed below. The question is, and I think it is a fair one: What makes for a successful first line?

Perhaps we should begin with a few of the contenders. While there is no definitive list, a perusing of this search engine or that will show that there are a few openers which seem universally held in high regard. In no particular order whatsoever:

~ “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” George Orwell: 1984

~ “Mama died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know.” Albert Camus: The Stranger

What each of these openers has is intrigue. Orwell not only balances an odd combination of weather conditions, but then also hits us with the impossible proposition that the clock has just struck thirteen. What Camus has done is taken an event about which no one could ever forget the most minute of details and somehow distanced his speaker from it in a matter of two sentences.

It is notable that both of these openers are short (ish). Sure, neither is Herman Melville’s three word classic, but neither approaches A Tale of Two Cities’ opening paragraph sentence either. So, intriguing and not too long–is this that formula then? Perhaps. But then a second group presents itself as well.

~ “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” Gabriel García Márquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude

~ “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” J.D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye

Both of these sentences feature a narrator who is looking back to the past. What in the world could have led from an outing with dad to a firing squad in the first example? What could have happened to the narrator to make him so standoffish in the second? Both of these examples feature a look back to where the story started. I must admit that this is a style I find very attractive. Both of my stories start with prologues, and I’ve always loved the “Here’s where I am. Now as to how I got here” approach. However, one must also notice that each of these two examples, once again, feature that level of intrigue.

So is it length? Is it perspective? Or is it just a little bit of intriguing ambiguity? Writers can’t even agree on whether good writing is determined by how many copies one sells or by the art of it all, so I’m sure there is no answer to be had.

All I’d like to know is how my all-time favorite didn’t make a single one of the lists I checked.

~ "Midway along the journey of our life I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path." Dante Alighieri: Inferno

Why Pushkin?

Alexander Pushkin 1799-1837

My love affair with Pushkin began, as many such relationships do, accidentally. It was 1998 (I believe) and I had just decided to travel to St. Petersburg, Russia.* A freshman in university at the time, my English professor suggested that I enhance my first ever trip abroad by writing an essay on a topic of Russian origin.

I'm not exactly sure how Pushkin first came to my attention. What I do know is that once I discovered him, I was hooked. Here was a man whom many consider the Father of Russian Literature who, let's be quite blunt, does not exactly resemble the majority of his countrymen. America may be the land of opportunity, but it is a place where people like Jackie Robinson become heroes because of their status as something different. Nowhere did I see that Pushkin was the Greatest Ever Not-Quite-so-European-Russian Writer. He was simply regarded as the benchmark.

Pushkin wrote and loved his way into, out of and back into exile. He wrote about duels long before he quite poetically met his end as a result of one. His words inspired Lenin to launch the Communist era and Yeltsin to finish it. He was a man who fought wars with a quill and not a sword. I firmly believe we could use such a man today more than ever.

All these reasons to love and respect the man and I haven't even mentioned the prose. Pushkin's short stories are amazing. My personal favorite is the Shot, though this is only an amuse bouche to his masterpiece, Eugene Onegin. Onegin tells the story of a maladjusted aristocrat who yearns for a love for which he is wholly ill-prepared. It is told entirely in a kind of stanza created by Pushkin for this novel and in this way is one part Pride and Prejudice and another part Ulysses. It really must be read to be experienced and while many different translations exist, the version by James Falen is exquisite (unless one is sadistic enough for the two volume Nabokov version, compared to which my novels must seem little more than greeting cards).

This is not remotely the last you will hear of Pushkin on this blog, but, for now, I believe I've said enough.

*While it has become far more romantic to explain my trip to Russia as a kind of pilgrimage, my discovery of Pushkin was a result of my impending vacation, not the other way around