The bats are out tonight. I don’t know why, or I’m just not saying. I keep going back to a scene in which a young man breaks down over a crib. I keep going back to a scene where a girl locks herself inside a gas station rest room. There’s a woman at St. Dunkin’s named Shilpa, and every morning when I go to NYC she gives me a huge smile and remembers how I like my coffee. Would you be surprised to know I sit in the same car in the same seat? I am mourning the loss of letters. I am mourning the loss of lettuce. Stones on top of graves. The cards my father dealt. Let’s split it three-ways. Promise me you’ll never never stick a needle into your face. Sometimes when I drive I think I am a middle aged mother running errands, or a man who makes toasters for the traveling show. I feel hopeful and hopeless. I am Louis XIV. I am his heir. I am the guillotine. The humble shovel. I thought the Elgin marbles were marbles. I am not really writing. Don’t ask me about poems. I was sixteen. Words exploded on a page. Has Betsy always been creative? Oh, yes, my mother says. I am cutting paper. I am adorable. Intent. I keep going to a scene I can’t remember.
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Here’s the 
525 Comments as of close of day Friday. It was like a freakin’ avalanche. This must be how Bransford feels all the time. I wasn’t sure anyone would even leave a title. So thanks to everyone who participated. To choose “the best,” it was impossible to do anything but sift through the titles as if through a pile of query letters. And I’ve selected those with exactly the same criteria as I do the letters that cross my desk: does the title (and some combination of elements in the letter) make me want to read more?
The problem with watching too much In Treatment is that you begin to take on Gabriel Byrne’s characteristics, his brooding mien, his Irish accent, his eye twitches that signal he gets it. You start telling people to get a good look at themselves, to find the connections among various life events, to pick up the almighty pattern. And then you try to offer a little hope, just a wee bit of salvation or redemption or revelation. You know: insight.
Over Thanksgiving holiday, my nephew (also my tech person and the smartest person in our family if Harvard admissions is any judge) suggested that I scrub up my blog if I ever wanted to apply for any job. This hit me like a ton of books. It’s not like I’m posting pictures of myself on Facebook wearing a tube top and throwing up at a backyard party, or doing bong hits in the ladies room of the Nassau Coliseum. I don’t even have a Facebook. I took umbrage at his remark; was I really that over the top, out of bounds, or to use the dread word: inappropriate. Was I eating dead babies? Smearing feces? Carving swastikas into my forehead. What was he talking about?
My husband has been reading the Saul Bellow letters. Over the last few days, he read out parts to me. I am a huge Bellow fan and plan to read the letters myself. Part of me wants to tell him to stop, don’t ruin it for me. But I don’t. I love hearing the riffs and moments that catch John’s eye. I think the theme is the same: space. How much you allow yourself as a writer.
I know I have a great deal to be grateful for, but I hate this fucking holiday. When people say, have a good holiday, shit, when I say have a good holiday, it always sounds like: try not to kill yourself. It’s funny, but I don’t think I’d be a writer if it weren’t for my family, by which I mean trying to get away from them. The crawl space under the stairs. The fort behind the house. The high school parking lot. The single in Tooting Bec. The little study painted in baby aspirin orange. The quarry in Rockport. And the fat raccoon who wished me well. Every twelve-plex. Every overcast sky. Every trail littered with leaf rot. Try not to kill yourself. And by that I mean, a happy and healthy to all of you wonderful malcontents and bitchin’ ass writers who show up here every day or from time to time. I am certainly grateful for you.
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/jonathan-franzen-tops-bad-sex-in-fiction-award-nominee-list_b17633#more-17633
Coming home from Miami last night, my daughter was reading Are You There Vodka, It’s Me Chelsea. A far cry from Are You There God, It’s Me Mags. And yes, I bought it for her. Look, she knows about periods. I’m a bad mother. But when I was thirteen I was sneaking Harold Robbins novels from my best friend Lisa Zimmerman’s mother. God, those books were fat and racy. You could feel yourself up reading them.
