This is so fucked up, but I hate it when people recommend books or movies to me and say, you are really going to love this. Or, this is right up your alley, or: you have to read this, it’s so you. I may not be a mystery wrapped in an enigma, but how the hell can you possibly know what I would like or why I even read  or go to movies in the first place. Look, I’m perverse. Everyone loved Mr. Burns in seventh grade, the hip history teacher who talked about Jethro Tull in his plaid polyesters. Everyone loved ET. And Elton John and Joni Mitchell. I do not do. I don’t like something because it’s dark or mentally ill or self-hating or Jewish or calorically challenged. I have inexplicable prejudices, pet peeves, and I read with a glow in the dark ring. This weekend I read a book that three separate friends said I would love. I loathed it.

Is there something wrong with me?

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I love old people as much as the next person, but even I was shocked by the tone of tonight’s 83rd Academy Awards. With all the hype surrounding relative infants Anne Hathaway and James Franco’s hosting debut, it appeared that this was the year that the Facebook generation might shake things up at the old Kodak Theater. But unfortunately, that was not to be. Yes, Natalie Portman, not yet 30, beat the long suffering Annette Bening for Best Actress, but other than that, Oscar was all about the Olds. And even James Franco had a hard time staying awake for his segments. Look, I don’t really have that many nice things to say. I think Helen Mirren looked fucking great. She almost overshadowed the ingenues, many of whom looked kind of whatevs. Jennifer Lawrence, for all her youth and beauty, looked a lot like an extra on Bay Watch, Betsy correctly pointed out. A lot of people weren’t even fitting into their gowns. Christian Bale had a bushel of ginger pubes on his face, and that was almost as distracting as his awful Australian accent on the red carpet (yes, I know he’s British). The biggest asshole of the night had to be Melissa Leo, for her appalling James Cameron-esque display upon winning Best Supporting Actress. I hate when people who know they’re going to win act all stunned and then take forever getting up to the damn stage, etc. Her expletive infused speech was just a sad commentary on what happens when we let these old people win stuff. Then she stole Kirk’s cane! (I was happy to see the old dildo used her left breast to prop himself up in response.) Whatever, they gave Best Everything to The King’s Speech, a film about a British guy who manages to get through a whole sermon without stuttering. The King’s Speech: soon to replace Cocoon on movie nights at nursing homes across the land. Awesome job, Hollywood! -The Hose

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Do you ever wish you could just give up on this whole fucking thing and join the human race? Why do you have to write shit down? Why do you have to set yourself apart and pledge your allegiance to sentences that, like bratty children, didn’t ask to be born?  Why must you pull your pants down, raise your freak flag, let it wave? Why do you have to sit all alone up there in your office while we are playing whist by the fire?  Why can’t you walk down a city street or through a field of thistles and leave it alone? So what it if looks like something else? So what if your life is a perfect metaphor for being an asshole, or an ass wipe, or a door mat? So what if sentences are coiled in your soul. If you could turn the world on with your bile?  Or cross Narcissus with Icarus and watch yourself burn? So what?

Wouldn’t you rather have a life?

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There was an article in today’s NYT (god forgive me for starting a post  with as lame an opening as that. I once had a boss whose entire social skill consisted of asking if you had read a particular article from either the WSJ or NYT. I always felt I had to read both papers when I worked for him and cram before I went in every morning, but I digress) about marginalia, where will it go in the digital age, who will care? I am big believer in the margins. The scrawls and doodles that make up a conversation between reader and writer. I once saw a project about Plath’s marginalia. I didn’t ultimately work on it, but it was pretty amazing stuff. A young woman went through Plath’s personal library and copied out her marginalia. It was as if Plath thought Dostoyevsky was personally writing for her. And the ways in which his ideas informed her poetry were also astounding to see. My marginalia is a touch more pedestrian. I once found an exclamation in my college copy of The Interpretation of Dreams in a passage about family destroying the self in which I remarked: that’s me! I also write words I don’t know in the backs of books and page numbers for passages I like when I don’t want to cock up the book.

Do you write in books?

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I spent the weekend putting the finishing touches on a writing project. I’m talking everything from catching typos, to seeing that a scene was missing, to sharpening up some dialogue, to making a final decision about the last scene in which I have taken a chance. Crazy or canny? I feel like a nervous bride on her wedding night. A clown in a dunking booth. Polly want a cracker. This is the moment no one has been waiting for.

How do you know you’re finished? How do know if it says what you want it to say? If it says what it needs so say? How do you know you’re ready to let it loose. What happens if the world’s indifference greets you with open arms? Does it matter to your future work? How do catch a cloud and pin it down? How do you pour a new foundation, pull a weed, remember those beautiful little packets of garden seed?

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Though I am a fully functioning human being to all outward appearances, I’m in that half-mummy, half-zombie state. In other words, I am in search of the perfect sub-title for a book I’m about to submit. The title, in this rare case, is a no-brainer. And I’d tell you what it is, but I can’t. The title is straightforward so the subtitle doesn’t need to explain it so much as offer some promise. There are all the usual sub-title variants:

How to Go Fuck Yourself

Seven Steps to Fucking Yourself

The Rise and Fall of Your Fucking Self

A Journey of

The Road to

The Path of

The Way of

A Meditation on

A Ballad of

A Song of

Notes On

The Philosophy of

The Psychology

A Short History Of

I will show off and say that my sub-title for Food and Loathing was brilliant:  Food and Loathing: A Lament. It was so brilliant in fact that the publisher made me change it on the paperback to the vomitrocious: A Life Counted Out In Calories. I cut this deal so they wouldn’t put mini shakes, burgers and fries on the jacket. You’re actually glad to see a book go out of print with that shit on it.

Do  you have any feelings about sub-titles one way or the other?  Did I miss any?

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I’m giving a talk tomorrow night.  I know that craftwork sounds a little like witchcraft, but it’s going to be good. Come if you can!

Craftwork with Betsy Lerner

Mercantile Library

17 East 47th Street

New York City

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After two years and three months of posting every day with the exception of guest bloggers when I’m away, it finally happened (and I know it happens to everyone and it’s not a reflection of my masculinity), but I couldn’t get it up. I started one post after another and I just didn’t feel it, couldn’t muster the desire or passion or just plain bone for life.

My head is swirling with the comments of the last few days and I don’t where to go with that. Much is happening at work, but I’m duty bound not to talk about projects and clients in play. I’m in the middle of three writing projects and suddenly feeling that a train is about to hit me as I dance on the tracks. And someone said my blog isn’t really about publishing and I feel defensive and wounded. Imagine that! My writing book is about publishing from an editor’s perspective, but the part that people seem more interested in is the inner life of writers. The wicked child and all that jazz. Touching fire! All that matters is release. I think that’s why I write. Bring my roots rain.

Have you ever had this problem?

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When I was hospitalized, a very good friend from high school, a writer friend,  wrote me a letter nearly every day for six months. She was the only person in high school with whom I shared my love of poetry. Under cover of darkness, we exchanged journals. The letters were deep and intense, addressing  much of what I was struggling with including my tenuous hold on life and battle with depression. She had strong opinions on these matters and her letters annoyed me as much as they helped me. She could not understand how a person could give in to depression. She didn’t believe in psychotherapy. She hated drugs with a passion. But still, those letters were amazing, just the fact of them, counting on their arrival, the familiarity of her penmanship, the pale green pages she tore out of a notebook. When mail arrived each day, I’d put her letter away until I could savor it in the day room on a worn out couch with a cigarette or two.

We fell out or apart soon after I got out. We exchanged one or two letters over the next few years. She told me that she quit writing and  had become a doctor. I found the letters over the weekend. They were all tied up with a string, a fat package. I couldn’t bring myself to read them.

Was there anyone in your young life with whom you shared a writing bond? Anybody now?

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