I’m going away for a few days to an unnamed Italian city. I’ve got to pack like now and I’m still all ungapotched about what to read. I”m pretty sure I’m taking the new Lorrie Moore (I know, predicatable, but still). And probably the James Atlas biography of Saul Bellow. I also want to read Katherine Harrison’s The Seal Wife and Walter Kirn’s Lost in the Meritocracy. I’m all over the place.

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I Am a Piece of Shit

I received a manuscript yesterday from an editor looking for a blurb. It’s a book by a person with an eating disorder.  It doesn’t look like anything I would ever read. I can’t do it. Until now, I’ve basically blurbed every book I’ve been asked to, which predictably have been books on writing and fat books. How can I say no? I was an editor for sixteen years. It’s hands down the worst part of the job, trawling for blurbs. You know what makes me insane, when a writer says that he or she has a “policy” of not giving out blurbs. A policy? What do they think they are? Statewide Insurance? Can’t  you just say you don’t have the time or you don’t care?  Do you really have to make a policy? And  is it a policy if you make it up and enforce it yourself? Because I should have a policy of not weighing myself the morning after I eat pepperoni pizza.

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Jim had a breakfast club, a group of friends who met every Friday at a diner in Chelsea for the last nine years. Many were in attendance at the wake and funeral. It was just last Friday when Jim didn’t show up that the group suspected something might be wrong.

A young man from the club spoke at the wake. He was shy at first, talked about coming to New York from Madison, Wisconsin and his great good luck to fall into a breakfast group with one of New York’s finest. He told the story of how Jim got one of his nicknames. Apparently a fight was escalating and Jim, afraid of fighting, pulled some kind of psycho routine instead, got the guy’s head in a lock and bit off part of his earlobe. Our young man allowed as to how this pre-dated the Mike Tyson incident. And thus Jim was dubbed Starry Night for the painter, the poetry, the ear.

Only later, after the wake, after the funeral, as I was walking  up Sixth Avenue, thinking about how much Jim loved to walk the avenues of his city, did it occur to me that he probably appropriated, embellished or made up that story completely. I got back to my office. The clock read 12:12. A most propitious hour.  Sleep well, Starry Knight.

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It’s funny, I can never seem to find my book in a single Barnes & Noble, but apparently the nation’s correctional facilities are stocked. I have received an inordinate amount of fan mail over the years from the inmates of America.  The most memorable was from an inmate who said that his three favorite books of all time were: The Bible, A Clockwork Orange, and The Forest for the Trees. 

Then the trail went cold until today when  #1183049 wrote to say that I  encouraged, challenged and chastened  him. He said I raised the bar. (In all modesty, he said I set the bar, and I think he knows something about bars.) He said my grasp of a writer’s heart was maternal. Come to mama.

I always wondered about those women who fall in love with the nation’s incarcerated. Are conjugal visits hot or do you just feel rushed and self-conscious? Are the guards watching?  And is that hot? Did Wally Lamb teach in prisons  before or after having two Oprah pics? Do they have Papillon in the library, one of my favorite books from High School? Or, no joke, Chicken Soup for the Prisoner’s Soul? 

 It’s extremely touching and a little scary getting letters from prison. It’s impossible not to wonder what the circumstances were that led to a person’s incarceration. Or what it took for them to write and send a letter. I’ve never written back – was too afraid of all those dead men walking. I think I’ll send a note to  #1183049. Wish him well.

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The last time I saw Jim I had gone to his apartment in Brooklyn to help him sort through the many drafts of his novel in progress. He wasn’t well, but for all his body’s betrayals the raconteur was in fine form. It took at least of couple hours until we parked ourselves in front of his computer and got to work. He had color-coded passages he wanted to ask me about and the screen looked like a Dan Flavin installation. The day was spent in serious debate over everything from adverbs (which I felt he used too liberally) and semi-colons, emerging themes, and what his main character Billy Wolfram would or wouldn’t do. Before I left, he showed me some memorabilia from his rock and roll days, and then we talked about the ending.

When I left, I was relieved to be in the fresh air, to feel the late sun on my face. I double-checked that I had the flash-drive where I had stored for safe-keeping the many drafts floating on Jim’s desktop. I looked back at his strange little building sort of stranded on the edge of Brooklyn, imagined I saw him in the window, and waved just in case. I wanted to go back and I wanted to go home.

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Dan Brown, Dan Brown, Dan Brown, Dan Brown. Dan Brown. Dan Brown. Dan Brown. Dan Brown. Dan Brown. Dan Brown. Dan Brown. Dan Brown. Dan Brown. Dan Brown

Looks nice, right?

Look, I’m really happy for the booksellers, for the printers and paper factories. Five million copies is a huge boon for everyone in the book business up and down the food chain. I’m most happy for the book stores whose business has been hit hard.  I. Am. Happy. Okay? I haven’t heard a bad word about Dan Brown, either. Unlike Mitch Albom who reportedly is a monster. (See how safe I feel picking on rich, successful writers? What a chicken shit, Lerner.)  It’s just that reading this morning’s paper made me kind of sick,  outlining all the Dan Brown hype including Matt Lauer’s countdown (barf) and Jeff Bezos nearly creaming his pants: “Last week Amazon’s chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, posted a breathless memo to customers on the Amazon.com home page, informing them that the company was taking “one of the most anticipated publishing events of all time” very seriously. “We’ve agreed to keep our stockpile under 24-hour guard in its own chain-link enclosure, with two locks requiring two separate people for entry.” Two whole locks! I hope the Ocean’s Eleven crew isn’t planning to crack this one.

It was kind of excruciating to read, sitting on the train, reading the fourth draft of a novel that probably won’t sell, but you love the author and are devoted to her. I understand Tucker Max’s next book is called Assholes Finish First.  I’m going to pre-order a copy from Amazon.

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Since the only thing more boring than listening to someone’s dream or the plot of their novel is hearing what they did on their vacation, I will keep this  brief.

First, and  I know the suspense is killing you, I did indeed defend my title as world’s greatest mini golfer.

I was less successful at Laser Tag. As I was about to gun down a small child, he said, “Please don’t shoot me, I’m six years old.” I put down my gun. You know the rest: he shot me in cold blood. Only to make it worse, he called me a “dipshit.”

On the literary end of things, I wasn’t able to read anything for pleasure because I had to edit a novel. Is there no end to my self-sacrifice?

We ended our trip at Edith Wharton’s summer home, The Mount, in Lenox, MA.  Favorite anecdote from the tour: Wharton wrote in bed every morning (obviously long hand) from 6-11. She paginated the pages and threw them on the floor when finished. Her servant would collect them, put them in order and ship them off to her editor. Her room, btw, had a view of her formal gardens, lake, forest and mountains beyond. (If my math is correct, that’s five hours of daily writing.)

Last, for those of you (and I know who you are) who remember Judicial Marshall Josh and his  judicial hotness, may I introduce White Water Rafting Guide Abe:  Twenty-something cross between Brad Pitt and Kevin Bacon. All biceps and wirey swagger. Mirror aviators, a scar cut into his eyebrow, a regimen of bad jokes he delighted in telling, and a Marlboro man.

Abe is such a show off!

Abe's biceps look terrific in this one.

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Many, many thanks for birthday wishes from far and wide. Here’s what I got, loot-wise:

A check from my mother. Ca-ching.

People Magazine renewed for another year from my sisters.

A Miele vacuum from my significant other. Friends, this is a top of the line appliance.

A ring inscribed sono il tuo Dodo from PLS.

And, from BFF, a small antique frame — inside a rusted razor blade. Genius.

And, for once, when I made my wish I didn’t wish for permanent weight loss or Hugh Grant making my movie. I wished for something real.

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It became evident early on in my career that  I worked with a disproportionate number of writers who suffered from addiction and depression. Coincidence?

Now, when I hear of someone struggling with these issues, I want to run. It wasn’t always that way. I used to be upfront and center.  Now, the drowning man terrifies me. 

I’m sure you’ve seen me. The girl who stands with her back to the subway wall. I no longer peer into the track. The third rail is always there, magnetic and menacing. But like a child who’s come too close to the stove, I’ve learned not to touch it. And eventually stopped craving it.

Sunday is my birthday and I will celebrate seventeen years of being well, my manic depression miraculously under control thanks to my brilliant doctor, my own vigilance and pure good fortune that medication works for me. Certainly not true for everyone.

And yes, I am dropping a hint that Sunday is the big 49. That’s Sunday, August 9th. I share this great birth date with Alfred Hitchcock and Philip Larkin, and the anniversary of  Richard Nixon’s resignation and Sharon Tate’s murder.

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