Every morning on my commuter train, a woman with a full head of  bright-white hair gets on the train in Stratford and greets everyone in the five-seater where she always sits. I can hear her booming Boston accent from my end of the car; she holds court for the remaining 1 1/2 hours of my nearly two hour ride. I call her Phil.

I’ve gathered the following from six years of commuting: Phil is a rabid Red Sox fan though she “respects” Derek Jeter (thanks, Derek appreciates that). She loves Ess-a-Bagel. She has a gaggle of grandchildren (“happy to see em’, happy to see ’em go”), her garage is full of nothing but junk, she’s never dyed her hair, she can’t believe how rude people can be, and her husband is a “bum.”

For six years, I’ve worked up a pretty healthy hate-on for her. After all (and this is where the publishing part comes in), I’m trying to read manuscripts, maybe even some of yours, and it’s really hard to concentrate when the Mayor of Stratford gets on the train and starts shaking hands and kissing babies.

I Miss Phil!

If you’re wondering why I don’t find another seat, you have not yet truly appreciated the magic that is me. I would sooner put my Papermate Sharpwriter #2 through my right eye than move.  But here’s the part I don’t understand about myself: yesterday, when we pulled into Stratford and Phil didn’t show, I actually looked up and kind of missed her. I was like, where’s Phil? Today, she’s back. In fact, she broke out the camel hair Pashmina and cowboy boots. And she’s spearheading another fasincating conversation about Daylight Savings Time and, gosh, it’s getting darker earlier. Ever notice that?

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I was going to write about syntax tonight, but given the OUTPOURING of responses to my  call for a vampire book, I thought I would provide some guidelines as to what exactly I’m looking for. I think some of you are really on to something. I especially like the one about the string quartet where the second violinist is  a vampire (who would suspect the SECOND violinist?). It’s genius! I also think the one set in an orthodox Jewish community has promise, where the vampire doubles as a towel attendant at the mikvah. (Is it just me, or does this have Whoopi Goldberg written all over it?)

Now, once you have your “concept,”  you need to write a “narrative” that will a) make me puke the way I did when I mixed 7&7’s with screwdrivers and hurled all over a seedy “disco in the round”  on a ski trip in Quebec;  b) make me wish I was dead like the time Rita DiNoozio sent fiery streams of toilet paper into my bathroom stall because I was Jewish; and  c) write the equivalent of the “first living abortion” which is what my older sister lovingly called me when we were growing up on Walton’s Mountain.

If you can do all this, you will be my next client and we will change the course of history together. I was even thinking of slashing my commish, but fuck that.

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I’m not going to temple today. It’s not that I haven’t done anything wrong this past year, or even that I’m not sorry for those things, I just  don’t see why I should die by asphyxiation from the collective smell of expensive pancake make-up favored by the women of the congregation or suffer through another internet sermon.

 Then there’s the book. Not the Torah. Food and Loathing, my darling memoir in which I write about our congregation and say some not altogther kind things about some people (and yes I am sorry for that, though not enough at the time to have stayed my hand). I’m not exactly Philip Roth, but  it’s uncomfortable especially when people ask, the accusation rich in their voices, are you writing another book? Sure, a sequel, Son of Food and Loathing,  Food and Loathing: Attack from Mars!   Food and Loathing Las Vegas!

What can I say. May we all be inscribed in the Book of Life. And send our love to those who’ve fled.

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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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