In a PW rant last week, a famous writer said, “The Internet is not to blame for your unfinished novel: you are.” As far as I’m concerned, the internet was created to keep more crappy novels from crowding the in-boxes of bitching ass agents like me. From crowding the shelves of bookstores. From taking down trees. From becoming e and crowding the what? ether? I think the more the internet keeps people from writing the better. Thank you internet porn. Thank you E-Bay. Thank you YouTube. Thank you Mark Zuckerberg. Every minute you surf the web is a minute you don’t write something stupid and pathetic. The internet is the next best thing to wanking, face picking, drawer reorganizing, and therapy. The internet is what separates the yolk from the whites. O, internet! O, website! The keys on my keyboard are ghost letters. The ring on my finger is you. The internet is in my bed. And this is my fuck you.
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I’m going to love up some writers in Miami on Thursday and Friday. I’m giving a talk called “Why Your Book Isn’t Selling.” I’m getting a little nervous that it might be too negatively cast. Even worse, I got roped into reading pages and doing the fifteen minute consult. I stopped doing these years ago when a woman cornered me in the ladies room, deeply upset my response to her pages. She was crying and yelling, mascara streaking her face. I was done doing consults after that. But somehow the nice folks in Miami got me in a weak moment. I feel like these 15 minute consults are the drive-by shootings of the conference world. Of course, I’ll do my best to help the writers who dare seek the great and mighty Oz. I want to save everyone, that’s my problem. I’ll also want to race back to the hotel and get a solid hate on for myself while I watch as many episodes of Law and Order the universe will offer up.
Leaving L.A. What wouldn’t make me cry. Leaky bag am I. Why does every new beautiful step sweep up in its hem so much sadness? Where did we go? Sunset Boulevard? A lemon TR6? I lost my notebook, my glasses, my pencil case. I lost my camera, my wool cap, my son’s bandana. A young man with a slow smile. Angela Lansbury sips tomato juice like a queen beside me. Did it flush? Did it drain? Is the driver Russian? Can you bear me? Am I too much? O, to not give an exquisite shit. Is Laurel Canyon a canyon? Am I the Pork King? In and Out Burger? Are those tits real? A small child with a port wine stain falls off a swing. I rented a car I didn’t drive. I watched the wedding and wanted to die. This dim light. This still life. A couch. A slant of Hopper light. You do not have a new idea. You do not have a new book. There are no pages left. The last typewriter died last night in Bangladesh.
Books might sell in clean well-lighted places, but they’re written under the floorboards, where mushrooms grow and centipedes crawl. I despise all the twee bullshit about how we “can’t not write,” the mystical jerkoff writing guides about Bones and Birds. Still, I think that’s the great divide. That’s why all the chipper Facebook updates are lies, why the happy how-to blog posts are bullshit. That’s why giving talks at the local birdwatching society isn’t just good marketing, it’s also bad writing. That’s why lurking in the foyer of an elementary school looking like you cut a slit in your trenchcoat pocket is worse than merely uncomfortable.
In late May and early June of 1986, between grad school and my first day at Simon and Schuster, I rented an efficiency in Mt. Desert Island, Maine for three weeks. I planned to write, clear my head, get over a break-up. After I got lost hiking for a few hours with only Madame Bovary and some yogurt covered raisins in my back pack, I called it quits. I was never very from the main road as it turned out, but I’m a big pussy with an overactive helter skelter imagination. I think it was day eleven.
I like to watch people in bookstores. If I could, I would follow them around with a survey or a tape recorder. I want to know why they pick up the books they pick up. Did they go into the store knowing what they wanted? Had they read a review, heard the author on NPR, or had the book been recommended? Were they just looking around and a jacket or title jumped out? Were they familiar with the author? DId they read the jacket copy, the blurbs? Did any of that make a difference? Did they read the first page, the last? Did they smell the spine? Did the display make a difference? The jacket art?The author photo? I live to understand why people are attracted to books.
I was invited to participate on a publishing panel last week at NYU. The last time I saw that many eyes glazed over is when I was student there thirty years ago. The panel never really came together, and I think I alienated a fellow panelist right out of the gate. He was lamenting the fact that writers couldn’t make a living just writing anymore. If five percent of writers make a living writing I would be surprised. I said that no one invites you to write, no one cares if you do, and that it is against the world’s indifference that you create. If you are lucky enough that the world loves what you write, then perhaps you will be among the few who make their living writing. The rest of us get up at dawn or write all night, or write on vacations, or quit for years and hate ourselves in an even more special way. Is it fair that a thriller writer can make millions and poet basically nothing. Is it fair that a “popular” historian can make millions while a scholar puts twenty years into a book for which he will be paid $5,000? Fair? If my mother raised me on one consistent mantra it was this: who said life was fair? And she said it after I wailed about the great injustices of life: my sister getting a larger portion of mac and cheese, the fact that I had to wear her hand me downs, including a set of faded olive Danskins. Enough said.
Why are poets such a-holes, you might ask. Is it their power with language, is it their widow’s peak streaked with white, is it their penetrating gaze or the way they pronounce poem pome? HOw about the way they read their own work? It’s like watching someone masturbate in slow motion. God, it’s gross. I used to love poetry readings, soaking up the beret life, drinking the warm Chardonnay. I fucking hate Chardonnay. And for some damn reason when I tell a waiter that I would like white wine, they always ask if I’d like Chardonnay. Is there something about me that screams Chardonnay? Why can’t they ask if I’d like a Pinot? A Sancerre? Another thing, poets think they’re better than other people.
A professional acquaintance asked me to look at a novel a few weeks ago. Sure, I chirped. Ug, I thought. The novel began with an author’s note that I think was meant to create an air of mystery. It said the story might be true, or it might not. My reaction to the note: who gives a shit? I mean, it’s work of fiction, right? If you want to tell me it’s based on a true story, tell me. If you say it’s all made up, I automatically think it’s not.What is your expectation when you read a novel. My feeling is that whether it’s actually true or not, its first obligation is to feel true, even if it’s science fiction, maybe especially if it’s science fiction. The world you enter whether it’s the ped next door or the inner ear, it has to feel fuckin real. Why did that note strike me as so…obnox? I’m sure it had everything to do with the tone, but it really got me thinking about fiction (I mostly represent non-fiction). I do find it amazing that we, as humans, want to read made up stories and the reason we want to read them, at least in part, is because they seem true.
Betsy Lerner 