Let Us Now Praise Unfamous Men

Steve Almond

In William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life, the latest entry in Ig Publishing’s Bookmarked series, Steve Almond writes about John Williams’s 1965 novel Stoner, which, despite positive reviews, was not a popular success until it was rediscovered in the early 2000s and went on to become an international bestseller. The plot of the novel is straightforward enough—“Stoner, the only son of subsistence farmers, attends college, unexpectedly falls in love with literature, and becomes a teacher; he endures a disastrous marriage, a prolonged academic feud, and a doomed love affair, then falls ill and dies,” Almond writes—but in William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life, the author sees the novel as a personal reckoning, a catalyst for sharing his own struggles as a writer, father, and husband grappling with his own mortality. Below is an excerpt from the book, published by Ig on June 11.

Let Us Now Praise Unfamous Men

In the autumn of 1995, at the age of twenty-eight, I abandoned a career in journalism to pursue the dubious goal of writing short stories. My selection of a graduate program was eased considerably by the paucity of my talent. I applied to twenty schools, was admitted to three, and offered financial aid by one, a state university nestled in the polite and muggy suburbs of the South.

I rented a carriage house whose central allure was a gleaming antique bathtub that seemed to portend my future. I yearned to become the sort of writer who spent hours bleeding truth onto the page before collapsing into a scalding soak. Everyone in the program dreamed the same dream. If we worked hard enough, if we read the right books, if we charmed the prevailing mentors, our work would be plucked from the slush pile, gussied up for publication, and bound into handsome volumes by the Bad Parents of New York City. At precisely this point, everyone who had ever rejected us would be forced to admit the terrible mistake they had made.

I was particularly inept at disguising my aims, and would eventually become so reviled that the fiction faculty barred me from attending workshops and refused to read my thesis. All that comes later. I mention these circumstances only to suggest my frame of mind when I first encountered Stoner.

This happened a few months into the program, at a party hosted by my friend Dan Belkin. We were getting to know one another with the help of some affable drugs when he asked if I’d ever read Stoner. I eventually discerned that he was referring to a novel, which I assumed would be a tale of hydroponic hi-jinx. It is not. The author, John Williams, begins:

William Stoner entered the University of Missouri as a freshman in the year 1910, at the age of nineteen. Eight years later, during the height of World War I, he received his Doctor of Philosophy degree and accepted an instructorship at the same university, where he taught until his death in 1956. He did not rise above the rank of assistant professor, and few students remembered him with any sharpness after they had taken his course…. Stoner’s colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now; to the older ones, his name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all, and to the younger ones it is merely a sound which evokes no sense of the past and no identity with which they can associate themselves or their careers.

To understand how audacious I found this opening, you would have to know how loyal I was, back then, to the dogma of the MFA program, the smothering exhortations to show, don’t tell. Because I lacked confidence in the stories I was trying to write, because those stories were at best half-formed, I reliably plunged my readers into the consciousness of some poor schlub in the midst of an unspecified crisis. I assumed this chaos would beguile readers, that they would hunger for all the facts I withheld from them. I was writing almost entirely out of my insecurity, which explained the inflamed prose, the preposterous plot twists, and glib dialogue. 

It wasn’t just the flat expository style of Stoner that flummoxed me. Williams had opened his novel by drily announcing the insignificance of his protagonist. I assumed the point of literature was to document the lives of the driven and depraved, the lawless and lust-riven, in short: the memorable.

It hadn’t occurred to me that the story of every life is, from a cosmic perspective, one of obscurity. You are alive for some brief span, then you die. The great mirage of human consciousness is that our striving deeds will render us immortal. It might be said that I had confused literature with history, which serves as the de facto press office of the infamous. This confusion redounded to my own corrupt ambitions. I wanted from literature to be known by the world. I had missed the point: Literature exists to help people know themselves. 

None of this occurred to me on that first night. I remember only that I read Stoner in a spell, and that I wept a good deal, inexplicably though not unhappily.

The novel’s central events can be summarized in a single sentence: Stoner, the only son of subsistence farmers, attends college, unexpectedly falls in love with literature, and becomes a teacher; he endures a disastrous marriage, a prolonged academic feud, and a doomed love affair, then falls ill and dies.

The book refuses to hurtle Stoner toward a traditional conception of heroism. He does not fight in a war or launch a doomed expedition. He does not ascend the ranks or vanquish his foes or risk all for love. He is often excruciatingly passive, constrained by the conventions of his age and the inhibitions of his character. Stoner enthralls precisely because it captures with unbearable fidelity the moments of internal tumult that mark every human life. 

Sometimes these are moments of regret or guilt or disappointment. Just as often they are moments of ecstatic revelation. The first of these occurs his sophomore year in college, during a required survey of English literature. To this point, the course has bedeviled Stoner. He reads and rereads the assignments but can find no meaning in the words. Toward the end of one class, his professor, an imperious figure named Archer Sloane, reads Shakespeare’s 73rd Sonnet and demands to know what Stoner makes of it. 

The poem is genuinely bewildering. The basic idea, barely visible beneath a tangle of naturalistic metaphor and vexing pronouns, is that our apprehension of mortality should inspire us to cherish the world of our youth. Stoner sits, awkwardly wedged into his wooden desk. The professor reads the poem again, this time tenderly, “as if the words and sounds and rhythms had for a moment become himself.” 

Stoner can summon no words, but the world around him suddenly takes on a phantasmagoric intensity. Light slants from the windows and settles upon the faces of his fellow students. He watches one blink and notices as a thin shadow falls upon a cheek “whose down has caught the sunlight.” Stoner marvels at the intricacy of his hands. He feels the blood flowing invisibly through his arteries. For several minutes after the others have left he sits dazed. He wanders the campus, taking in “the bare gnarled branches of the trees curled and twisted against the pale sky.” He regards his fellow students curiously, “as if he had not seen them before, and felt very distant from them and very close to them.”

The compression of sensual detail makes this passage read like a reverie, but something quite simple is happening: William Stoner is suddenly paying attention to his life. 

It took me several years to absorb the essential lesson of Stoner, which is a precise repudiation of the idea I clung to back then. What matters is not the quality of a particular life, but the quality of attention paid to that life. 

I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was the reason I had fled journalism in the first place. As an investigative reporter, I was expected to document the escapades of notable scoundrels, dirty cops, con men, the whole sordid smorgasbord. My editors wanted an accretion of damning fact. But I kept pondering motive; what had possessed these people to self-destruct? “The interior life is a real life,” as James Baldwin observes, “and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.”

This line of inquiry did not sit well with my bosses. I can still remember the reaction offered by the owner of the newspaper chain for whom I worked. He had flown into town, as he did every year, to ball us out for insufficient zeal. These reprimands usually happened at a fancy restaurant, where we could feel guilty for dining on his corporate credit card. When I announced my departure for grad school, he glared at me for a good half minute. “You want to write books?” he said finally.

I didn’t know what to tell him. I just had a hunch I’d been investigating the wrong part of the human arrangement. 

Stoner confirmed that hunch, more forcefully than any book I’d ever read. It exerts a stubborn grip on readers like me because it offers something increasingly rare in modern life: a dogged devotion to the inner life. By “inner life,” I simply mean the private realm of thought and feeling through which we come to know ourselves. I stress the term because I believe our entire species is, at this perilous moment, engaged in a pitched battle for the inner life, one so pervasive it has become as invisible as air.

This struggle has been with us all along. It’s ordained by consciousness. Among all creatures, humans face a unique burden. Do we choose to face the solitude of selfhood, the misfortunes engineered by fate and folly, the many ways we disfigure love into cruelty? But over the past half century (the course of my lifetime) this struggle has degenerated into an all-out assault. 

To focus on the inner life today—to read books, to think deeply, to imagine with no ulterior agenda, to reflect on painful or confusing experiences—is to defy the clamoring edicts of our age, the buy messages, the ingrained habits of passive consumption and complaint. It is not yet a crime, merely an arcane and isolating practice.

There are obvious economic explanations. Vast sectors of our economy are devoted to the magical notion that potions and products and garish spectacle can banish our shame and doubt. And thus corporations, which promote and profit by a pervasive state of agitation, must eradicate the hauntings of the inner life. 

The abrupt proliferation of technological devices has offered us the illusion of a mass confessional. But our phones and laptops more often represent a refuge from the tribulation of our internal experience. We turn to them in moments of anguish, rewiring our brains to seek diversionary stimulations. The frantic beckoning of our feeds has thus become another market for distraction, an array of “platforms” upon which we perform a market-ready version of our lives. 

To read Stoner today is to recognize how shallow our conception of the heroic has grown. As a nation, we worship athletes and moguls and movie stars, those who possess the glittering gifts we equate with worth and happiness. Our realpolitik is dominated by a preening demagogue birthed in the oxymoronic swamp of reality television. The fictions that shriek across our screens are paeans to reckless ambition. This mania has infiltrated even our literary culture, with agents and editors stalking “larger than life” stories ripe for cross promotion.

It’s not just that we’re all toting around omniscient devices the size of candy bars. It’s the staggering acceleration of our cognitive and emotional metabolisms: our hunger for sensation and narcissistic reward, our readiness to privilege action over contemplation. Our tireless compulsion to be known by the world rather than seeking to know ourselves.

Where does that leave a figure such as William Stoner, a timid medievalist who spends his life studying ancient manuscripts? Long before his retirement, he is regarded as a relic around campus. He would qualify as a fossil today.

William Stoner will dwell in obscurity forever. But that, too, is our destiny. Our most profound acts of virtue and villainy will be known only by those closest to us, and forgotten soon enough. Even our deepest feelings will lay concealed within the vault of our hearts. The reason we construct fame fantasies is to hide from these dire truths. By burnishing our public personae, we seek to escape the terror of facing our hidden selves. What marks Stoner as such a subversive work is that it portrays this confrontation not as a tragedy, but the essential source of our redemption. 

Stoner knows his place in the world. He knows that others find him absurd, a footnote in the great human story. Over and over again, he is slammed up against his own inadequacies as a son and father and husband and scholar. And yet he refuses to turn away. As Stoner lies dying, a softness enfolds him, and a languor creeps upon his limbs. “A sense of his own identity came upon him with a sudden force, and he felt the power of it. He was himself, and he knew what he had been.”

How many of us can say the same of ourselves?

In the years since my first fervid encounter with the novel, I’ve read Stoner a dozen times. I never quite mean to. I don’t get up in the morning and think to myself, Hey, why don’t I read Stoner again? I’ll just be wandering around my office, frisking the shelves for inspiration; an hour later I’m 40 pages in and beyond rescue. I’ve probably read more pages of the book standing up than sitting down.

What I want to argue in this peculiar pint-sized ode is that our favorite novels aren’t just books. They are manuals for living. We surrender ourselves to them for the pleasures they provide, and for the lessons they impart. 

I’ve learned more about craft from reading Stoner than any workshop I ever took, and spent years studying the technical intricacies that fortify its limpid prose. Stoner has also helped me find clarity amid the mass delusions of our age. In its own restrained manner, the novel casts a piercing light upon the worship of power and wealth that has corroded our national spirit. 

But the central reason I keep circling back to Stoner isn’t aesthetic or moral. Deep down, what I’m after is personal reckoning. Each time I’ve read the book, it has illuminated some new aspect of my own inner life, as I’ve evolved from student to teacher, from bachelor to husband and father, from a son in mourning to a man staring down his own mortality. 

We cherish certain books precisely because they wield this power of intimate revelation. We read them to be enchanted, to be transported out of ourselves, but most centrally, to know ourselves more deeply. That process is no picnic. Reading Stoner has become an increasingly painful experience for me over the years—almost unbearable, as you’ll see. 

And yet I find tremendous hope in the fact that the novel has endured within an empire whose industrial energies are dedicated to annihilating the inner life. Like a medieval manuscript, it has been passed from one reader to the next, a fragile and exquisite reminder that a meaningful life arises from the willingness to pay attention, especially when it hurts to do so.

From William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life by Steve Almond. Copyright © 2019 by Steve Almond. Used by permission of Ig Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. 

 

Steve Almond is the author of ten books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Against Football and Candyfreak. His short stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, the Best American Mysteries, and the Pushcart Prize anthologies. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. He hosts the New York Times “Dear Sugars” podcast with Cheryl Strayed. Steve lives outside Boston with his wife and three children.

Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country

by

Steve Almond

2.14.18

Online Only

In February Red Hen Press will publish Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country by Steve Almond. Described as “a lamentation aimed at providing clarity,” Bad Stories is Almond’s effort to make sense of our historical moment using literary voices—from Melville to Orwell, Bradbury to Baldwin—that help dismantle, as Cheryl Strayed describes it, “the false narratives about American democracy that got us into the political pickle we’re in.” Below is an excerpt from the first chapter of the book.

The subtitle of this bewildered little book matters. I’m not offering a single theory, or even a set of theories, as to how our democracy fell apart. I am working toward a synthesis of theories. The ascension of Donald Trump to the presidency is certainly the impetus for this investigation. But it should not be mistaken for my subject.

For most of my adult life, I’ve been tracking the odd and lurching course of our democracy. I’ve pursued this interest not as an historian or a political scientist, but as a reporter and, more recently, a fiction writer. That makes me a storyteller technically, though I feel more often like a woozy student of the American story.

I’ve placed my faith in stories because I believe them to be the basic unit of human consciousness. The stories we tell, and the ones we absorb, are what allow us to pluck meaning from the rush of experience.

In his elegant 2014 book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari insists that our species came to dominate the world because of our unique ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers. This capacity, he contends, stems from our unique cognitive ability to believe in the imagined, to tell stories that extend our bonds beyond clan loyalties. Our larger systems of cooperation, whether spiritual, political, legal, or financial, require faith in the notion of a common good.

But what happens when some of the stories we tell ourselves are bad, meaning fraudulent either by design or negligence? What happens when the stories are frivolous? Or when we ignore stories that are too frightening to confront? What happens when we fall under the sway of stories intended to sow discord, to blunt our moral imaginations, to warp our fears into loathing and our mercy into vengeance? The principle argument of this book is that bad stories lead to bad outcomes.

I agree with Harrari when he argues that our faith in stories has been integral to our survival as a species. But I also believe that the 2016 election is an object lesson in just how much harm bad stories can inflict upon even the sturdiest democracy.

As I struggled to make sense of the election, my mind kept spiraling back to one particular scene in American literature: Ahab, perched upon the quarterdeck of the Pequod, a “grand, ungodly, god-like man” with a prosthetic leg fashioned from a whale’s jawbone. The captain has come to announce the true nature of his mission, which is not economic in nature but deeply personal. He seeks revenge against the leviathan that maimed him and exhorts his crew with a soliloquy Trumpian in pitch if not diction.

“All visible objects are but pasteboard masks,” Ahab roars. “If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ’tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.”

It is this volcanic sense of grievance that fuels Melville’s saga, that binds the crew of the Pequod to their leader. “Ahab’s quenchless feud seemed mine,” Ishmael tells us, rather helplessly. Who can blame the kid? Ahab is something like a natural force, a vortex of vindication as mighty as the beast he pursues.

After four years of maniacal pursuit, Ahab spots his enemy and attacks. It does not go well. The wounded whale smites the Pequod, drowning all aboard and rendering the ship a hearse. In the end, “possessed by all the fallen angels” Ahab himself pierces the pale flank of his nemesis with his harpoon. But in the process, the rope winds up noosed around his neck and the beast drags him to his fate. Even a passing sky hawk gets snagged in the wreckage, “and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it.”

Melville is offering a mythic account of how one man’s virile bombast can ensnare everyone and everything it encounters. The setting is nautical, the language epic, the allusions Biblical and Shakespearean. But the tale, stripped to its ribs, is about the seductive force of the wounded male ego, and how naturally a ship steered by men might tack to its vengeful course.

The plot of Moby Dick pits man against the natural world. But its theme pits man against his own nature. The election of 2016 was, in its way, a retelling of this epic. Whether you choose to cast Trump as agent or principal hardly matters. What matters is that Americans joined the quest. Whether in rapture or disgust, we turned away from the compass of self-governance and toward the mesmerizing drama of aggression on display, the capitalist id unchained and all that it unchained within us. Trump struck through the mask. And it was enough.

When I started writing this book, in the months after the election, I was furious and frightened, worn down by decades of disappointment and determined, mostly, to launch harpoons at those I imagined to be my adversaries.

That, too, is a part of this story. The great peril of our age is not that we have turned into a nation of Ahabs, but of Ishmaels, passive observers too willing to embrace feuds that nourish our rancor and starve our common sense. It is this Manichean outlook that laid the groundwork for the ascent of Donald Trump and has, as of this writing, sustained his chaotic reign.

I am struggling in these pages to see Trumpism in a different light: as an opportunity to reckon with the bad stories at the heart of our great democratic experiment, and to recognize that often, embedded within these bad stories, are beautiful ideals and even correctives that might help us to contain the rage that has clouded our thoughts.

I have taken a patchwork approach to this project, one that knits statistical data, personal anecdote, cultural criticism, literary analysis and, when called for, outright intellectual theft. I’m trying, in the broadest sense, to understand how the American story arrived at this point.

I’ve taken Ishmael as my guide here. For while it’s true that he falls under the spell of Ahab’s folly (as did I, as did I) he is also its only surviving witness and chronicler, the voice left to impart whatever wisdom might be dredged from the deep. Amid the spectacle of a mad captain and his murderous quarry, we mustn’t forget that Moby Dick is a parable about our national destiny in which the only bulwark against self-inflicted tyranny is the telling of the story.

From Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country by Steve Almond. Copyright © 2018 by Steve Almond. Used by permission of Red Hen Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. 

Steve Almond is the author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. He teaches at the Nieman Fellowship for Journalism at Harvard University and hosts the New York Times podcast Dear Sugars with fellow writer Cheryl Strayed.

The Darkness Within: In Praise of the Unlikable

by

Steve Almond

January/February 2018
12.13.17

In Print and Online

Last summer I wrote a review of Who Is Rich? (Random House, 2017) by Matthew Klam. The novel is narrated by a man named Rich Fischer, a self-loathing husband and father who conducts an anguished and antic affair with an equally unhappy infidel.

Shortly after I turned in my review, I heard the book discussed on the radio. The segment opened on an odd note. “Rich is a hard man to like,” the host began. I sat back in astonishment—the notion hadn’t even occurred to me. But a quick survey of prepublication reviews revealed that this was, in fact, the consensus view: Rich was whiny, selfish, unsympathetic.

These complaints, it should be noted, weren’t generally directed at his adultery, about which he is so racked with guilt that he attempts to kill himself twice. No, his central offense is that he articulates the miseries of monogamy and parenthood with such tender precision. He’s hard to like, in other words, because he makes the reader feel uncomfortable.

And yet when I survey the books that inspired me to quit journalism and take up fiction two decades ago, every single one features protagonists who are “hard to like” in the exact same way: Birds of America by Lorrie Moore, The Lover by Marguerite Duras, Airships by Barry Hannah, Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson, the stories of Flannery O’Connor.

My predilection for destructive and discomfiting characters arose, in part, from my years as an investigative reporter, which I spent tracking con men and corrupt cops, shady developers and sexual deviants.

In my reporting, the central danger was detection by the authorities. In literature, the danger was self-revelation. The question was why people messed up their lives and, when they got going, the lives of those around them.

This question began with the characters, but it extended to the reader. Spending time with folks who were morally flawed and ruthlessly candid, who had thrown all manner of caution to the wind, was thrilling specifically because they enacted my own repressed urges. I didn’t just want to rubberneck their misdeeds. I felt implicated by them.

As I turned all this over in my mind, I began to realize why I’d found the scolding critiques of Rich Fischer so vexing. They weren’t just sanctimonious or shallow. There was something cowardly in them, a mind-set that positioned fiction as a place we go to have our virtues affirmed rather than having the confused and wounded parts of ourselves exposed.

***

A lot of ink has been spilled over the past few years on this question of likability, as well as an adjoining anxiety: how important it is that characters be “relatable.” One of the flash points of this debate emerged from the critical reception of Claire Messud’s fierce novel The Woman Upstairs (Knopf, 2013), whose narrator, Nora Eldridge, spends much of the book railing against the forms of feminine duty she has internalized.

When an interviewer for Publishers Weekly observed that she “wouldn’t want to be friends with Nora” because of her “unbearably grim” outlook, Messud’s reply lit up the Internet. “For heaven’s sake, what kind of question is that?” she demanded. Messud went on to cite a dozen famously repellent male characters who are rarely, if ever, subjected to such a litmus test. “If you’re reading to find friends,” she concluded, “you’re in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities. The relevant question isn’t ‘Is this a potential friend for me?’ but ‘Is this character alive?’”

Messud was hailed for confronting what we might call the fallacy of likability, and the ways in which female authors are expected to cleave to this notion.

One of the most fascinating reactions came from novelist Jennifer Weiner. In an essay published by Slate she noted, rightly, that many readers come to fiction hoping to spend time with characters they admire. And she argued that the creators and consumers of such characters shouldn’t be looked down upon.

But Weiner’s defense of likability was undermined by her own resentments. Likable, she insisted, was a code word “employed by literary authors to tell their best-selling brethren that their work sucks.” Her response was to tell Messud that her work sucked.

“There’s no payoff,” Weiner wrote of The Woman Upstairs, “just a 300-page immersion in the acid bath of Nora’s misery, her jealousy, her lack of compassion, her towering sense of entitlement.” Weiner felt Messud had willfully crafted a character to whom no one can relate.

The irony was that Nora elicited such vehement reactions precisely because readers related to her too much. They felt implicated, both by her impotent rage and the despair lurking beneath her grievances. “Above all, in my anger, I was sad,” she confesses. “Isn’t that always the way, that at the heart of the fire is a frozen kernel of sorrow that the fire is trying—valiantly, fruitlessly—to eradicate.”

What I’m getting at here is that the debate about likability ultimately boils down to sensibility. Nora Eldridge’s view of the world, and her place in it, is too dark and intense for some readers. When they pick up a book, they want to be transported to a sunnier precinct, or a more exotic one, with a friendlier companion. They seek a refuge from the anguish of their inner life.

There’s no right or wrong in any of this. It’s a function of what sort of experience we’re after as writers and readers.

***

There’s another unspoken factor in all this: the market. If you’re an unpublished writer seeking representation, and you submit a manuscript with an abrasive protagonist, chances are you’re going to hear from agents concerned about likability. The whole reason Lolita was originally published in France, and nearly three years later in the United States, is that Humbert Humbert’s panting hebephilia was abhorrent to American editors.

Cultural and literary standards evolve, of course. But financial anxieties are forever. Which is why agents and editors remain wary of characters they fear readers will find off-putting. In a world where reading books is itself a marginal activity, one performed in defiance of the perpetual racket of digital distraction, why risk losing sales?

I spent weeks, for instance, arguing with my editor about the section of my memoir, Candyfreak (Algonquin Books, 2004), in which I developed the irrational conviction that I had testicular cancer during a barnstorming tour of U.S. candy bar factories. My editor argued, quite sensibly, that this disclosure made me a lot less likable as a guide. What’s more, it dampened the giddy mood that prevailed elsewhere and guaranteed the book would never be adopted in school curriculums.

The reason I insisted on its inclusion was that I saw my self-diagnosis as an integral part of the story, a symptom of the depression that had reignited my childhood obsession with candy.

I don’t mean to imply that highlighting the repellent traits of a character is some shortcut to literary depth. That’s as foolish as the notion that scenes of graphic violence or sex will magically yield drama.

Some years ago I began a novel about a shameless right-wing demagogue who decides to run for president (I know). The response I got from readers was that my leading man, while fun to hang out with for a little while, was ultimately oppressive. It wasn’t that my leading man had the manners and conscience of a shark but that he had no subtext, no dreams or fears animating his outsize appetites. Nor did he hew to the path of so many unlikable protagonists, the Emma Woodhouses and Ebenezer Scrooges, who are forced to confront their flaws and wind up redeemed in the bargain. My man was self-regarding without being self-aware.

Such a figure might plausibly thrive in the world of politics (again, I know). On the page, he quickly degenerated into caricature. 

***

But what about those characters who refuse to evolve or offer up much in the way of vulnerability? I am thinking here of our most famous villains: Milton’s Satan, Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, Joseph Conrad’s Kurtz, Flannery O’Connor’s Misfit, Cormac McCarthy’s Judge Holden. These figures, though not technically protagonists, dominate their given worlds.

They do so because they’re willing to violate moral norms and thus wind up driving the action of the story. They’re also fearless in apprehending the nature of the world around them, even if they deny us access to their own inner lives. Most vitally, they embrace the transgressive aspects of their selfhood, the ones we anxiously inhibit so as to appear more likable.

Consider Melville’s Captain Ahab as he stands upon the deck of the Pequod, roaring out the true nature of his mission. “If man will strike, strike through the mask. How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me,” he tells his crew. “I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and…I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.”

Tell us how you really feel, Ahab.

The reason readers like me gravitate toward characters like Ahab is that, not very deep down, we know ourselves to be equally charged with wrath, besieged by private doubts and grudges, and thus enthralled by those who dare to speak truth in a world overrun by personal forms of marketing.

The rise of Internet culture has only magnified the allure of such figures. Most social media platforms revolve around an elaborate effort to generate “likes” by presenting an airbrushed version of our lives and values. What grants trolls their magnetic power—whether they lurk online or in the White House—is the unacknowledged force of our own suppression.

Moral perfection is admirable, after all, but deadly dull in a literary character. I think here about the figure of Jesus Christ as we encounter him in the New Testament. He says and does all the right things. But he only comes alive as a character in those rarely cited verses when his revolutionary ire and human needs come into view.

The most shocking moment in the Gospels takes place a few days before his appointed end. On the way to Jerusalem, he stops in Bethany, where a woman lovingly anoints his head with perfumed oil.

The act angers some of those who witness it, including Judas Iscariot, who asks Jesus whether the expensive oil could have been put to better use if it was sold and the money given to the poor. “The poor you will always have,” Jesus replies. “But you will not always have me.”

It’s a moment of sensual indulgence and unvarnished pride that’s astonishingly out of character for Jesus. By my reckoning, he’s never more likable. 

***

I don’t expect this piece will do much to settle the question of likability. It’s one of those disputes into which writers will continue to pour their opinions and anxieties.

And that’s probably a good thing, if you think about it. Because we happen to be living in a historical moment ruled by unlikable characters. Take a look at our political and popular culture, at the angry voices emanating from our screens, at the seething violence in our discourse.

As writers, it can feel pointless to engage in literary endeavors when the world around us feels so combustible, so fragile. But I would argue that it has never been more important for writers to engage with the questions literature seeks to answer.

If we are to reclaim our country from the dark forces determined to divide us, to sow discord and cynicism among us, we must first seek to understand the darkness within ourselves. That means turning to stories in which we encounter characters actively engaged in the struggle—and sometimes failing—to contain their unbearable thoughts and feelings.

The urgent question isn’t whether we like these folks. It’s whether, in coming to know them, we come to know ourselves any better.

 

Steve Almond’s book Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country is forthcoming in April from Red Hen Press.

His central offense is that he articulates the miseries of monogamy and parenthood with such tender precision. He’s hard to like, in other words, because he makes the reader feel uncomfortable.

Polite Need Not Apply: A Q&A With Mary Gaitskill

by

Joseph Master

12.11.17

Online Only

Mary Gaitskill doesn’t believe literature should have to be polite. Do a Google image search of the author and you’ll see a succession of penetrating gazes—pale, wide eyes you just can’t fend off. Gaitskill’s writing, which has earned a National Book Award nomination, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a PEN/Faulkner nomination, has a similar effect. The author whose most recent book is a collection of personal and critical essays, Somebody With a Little Hammer (Pantheon, 2017), is best known for her fiction, having previously published three novels and three story collections. Gaitskill has been labeled “The Jane Austen of sickos,” a moniker that supposes her fiction—famous (and in some circles probably infamous) for its enjambment of sexual brutality with sensuous lyricism—is debauched. While her prose can at times appear as icy as her stare, waves of empathy, soul, and B-12 shots of humor course beneath the surface. From her first book of short stories, Bad Behavior (Simon & Schuster, 1988), which became widely known for “Secretary,” a story of sadomasochism and desire that was made into the 2002 indie film starring James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal, to her most recent novel, The Mare (Pantheon, 2015), Gaitskill’s fiction has always been ferocious, but not for the sake of brutality. The fireworks are in the vulnerability of human connection, not just the spectacle of sex. When she talks about her craft, Gaitskill’s eyes brighten and she smiles often. If you are fortunate enough to speak to her about Chekhov or Nabokov, as I was, you feel thankful for her clairvoyant insights, for her mastery of opinion—for her energizing confidence in what makes a good writer.

In an interview you once said, “Literature is not a realm of politeness.” What’s your style in the classroom? Are you the conditionally supportive teacher or the unconditionally supportive teacher?
I’m sure most people would call me conditionally supportive. I don’t really know what I’m like. I mean, I can’t see myself from the outside. People have described me as blunt. I’m not always, actually. I mean, I’m not always as blunt as I—

As you want to be?
—as I might be if I were actually being blunt [laughs]. I’m blunt if I think there is no other way to be. I think my teaching style has also somewhat changed. And again, it’s hard to see myself from the outside. But I think I’ve learned how to be critical in a better way than I used to. In the past, I was so uncomfortable in a position of authority. I had never had a job before where I had any authority at all. My generation is notoriously uncomfortable with authority. That’s why we are terrible parents. I mean, I’m not speaking personally. I am not a parent. But it’s a thing—my generation makes awful parents. Because they’re so busy trying to make their children happy and be a friend to their children and make everything in their life work out that they end up just smothering them, basically.

All unconditional! I guess psychologists would say you need one unconditional and one conditionally loving parent, right? There’s a balance.
I had a similar problem teaching. But, it didn’t show up in the same way. I was just so uncomfortable having to be the authority. And I knew that I had to be. So the things I would say would come out much more forcefully than I actually meant them. It translated into harshness. And it was actually coming from a place of real discomfort and insecurity. But I don’t think the students knew that. Maybe some of them did, some of the time.

I remember a former writing professor, Chuck Kinder, always driving home the principle of Chekhov’s smoking gun. This West Virginian drawl saying, “If there’s a gun, there had better be gun smoke.” What’s your smoking gun principle? Do you have a rule?
I don’t, actually. I think there are very few rules that can’t be broken. I think there is only one that is very difficult to break. I have seen it broken, but not very often. It’s that something has to change. From the beginning of the story to the end, something needs to be different. The only time I’ve ever seen it successfully broken was a Grace Paley story called “A Conversation With My Father.” But as a general rule, something has to change. There has to be some source of tension. And even that can be subtle. Even in the language itself. You know the Flannery O’Conner story “Everything That Rises Must Converge”?

Yes!
The blood pressure. It’s mentioned in, I think, the first or second sentence. The blood pressure is the number-one thing.

Earlier I asked you which short stories of yours I should read, and you immediately responded with “Secretary.” You said you considered it one of your best. So I started there with Bad Behavior. That was your first book. You were thirty-three when it was released. How long did it take you?
About six years.

A first book is like a band’s first record, right? You have your whole life up to that point to write that first collection of words. And you release it. And then people tell you who you are. They say, “Oh, you’re the masochism writer,” or  “you’re the next Dylan.” It can be kind of crushing. Then you have, what? A year? Five years? You have such a shorter time frame to follow it up. What was the difference between writing Bad Behavior and your second book, the 1991 novel Two Girls, Fat and Thin?
Well, there were a couple of things. I had actually started the novel before I sold the story collection. I had written maybe thirty-five pages and stopped, because I just didn’t know what to do. And the reason I picked it up again was because I was in a publisher’s office, and they didn’t know if they wanted to buy the collection or not. And the guy said, “So, do you have a novel?” And I said, “Yeah. Yeah I do.” And he said, “What’s it about?”

And I just started talking about these girls. And they were like, “Oh, ok.” And they wanted to do a two-book deal: the short story collection and the novel.

Well, that certainly worked out.
It didn’t have to do with the process, though. It was much more complicated. Because when I was writing Bad Behavior I could always say to myself, “It doesn’t have to be good. No one is going to see it.” That actually made it possible for me to go forward. I said that to myself literally every time I sat down, repeatedly. “It doesn’t have to be any good. No one will see it.”

Like The Basement Tapes. Dylan and his band didn’t mean for anyone to hear them. They were just hanging out in Woodstock, recording music they never thought would see daylight.
It’s a very helpful thing to say to yourself. And I didn’t have any expectation of how it would be received, either. Whereas with Two Girls I could not say that. I knew people were going to see it. And actually, for the first time, I was self-conscious about how it would be seen. And I felt a desire, an obligation almost, to please certain readers. Because I knew who had liked Bad Behavior and I knew why they liked it. So I was uncomfortable about disappointing those people, perhaps. I tried as hard as I could to put those feelings aside. But it was very difficult.

That had to be jarring.
It was.

Had you ever thought about your limitations as a writer when you were working on that first collection?
Oh, yeah! I thought I was terrible.

You thought you were terrible?
That was the other thing about Two Girls that was different. It was that I had never tried to write a novel before. Short stories are—some people say they are harder, but I don’t think so. And the reason I don’t think so is because it’s just a smaller space to deal with. I mean, some are quite capacious. It’s not that they are easy. I don’t find them easy. But a novel? It’s like I was a cat that had been in a house all of its life, and all of a sudden a door was flung open. And I was flooded with sights and smells and was crazily running over in one direction wondering what was going on there and getting distracted. And then running in the other direction. It was a total feeling of freedom. But I didn’t know what to do with it. It was very hard to figure out what I wanted to pay attention to and how to structure it. And stories are way more manageable that way.

Being flooded with sights and smells. Yes. So appropriate, because your fourth novel, Veronica (Pantheon, 2005), is flooded with sights and smells and senses that overlap and eclipse each other. Let’s start with the origin myth that opens the book —the dark folktale told to the narrator, Alison, by her mother. Alison revisits this story for the rest of her life. It haunts her. At one point she admits that she felt it more than she heard it. At what phase in the process of writing this novel did you write the beginning—this story that keeps coming back?
I added that later.

Was there a Lebowski’s Rug moment, when you arrived at this origin story and added it, and it really brought the whole room together?
Honestly, it was because someone who read a draft of the book said it reminded them of the tale The Girl Who Trod on the Loaf. It’s Hans Christian Anderson. And I said, “Really, what’s that?” And I went and looked it up. And I agreed. I thought it was perfect.

Those old tales are soul crushing and beautiful, but also scary as hell. It’s scary being a kid.
Right. Because everybody’s bigger than you. And they are weird! [Laughs.]

You’ve mentioned a soul-quality in writing. I’ve read interviews where you break it down to the molecular level. I guess it’s a voice quality, right? This energy. How did you find that? And how in the world do you teach that?
I don’t know. How did I arrive at the voice quality?

Yes. This energy in your writing, the music of it. The way you describe these grotesquely beautiful things. It’s your voice. What all MFA students want so badly to get, I think, is their own version of that.
I used to tell students, “I want to see it how only you can see it. I don’t want to see it how a hundred people would see it.” I was basically telling them not to rely on shared perception. There isn’t anything wrong with shared perception. It can be a beautiful thing, and I think music relies partly on shared perception, or it assumes a certain kind of shared perception, rightly or wrongly. Because you feel, in a group of people, that you are hearing it the same, although you’re probably not. You feel that commonality. Slang. Expressions. There are certain things that make shared perception beautiful. You can’t have a conversation without it. But when you’re reading a story, it’s a different thing. It’s much more intimate. It’s much more like…you’re wanting to get the pith of what that person feels and sees. It’s more like that.

Music plays a huge, great part in Veronica. What’s your soundtrack?
You mean, what music do I listen to?

Yes. When you’re writing, or on the train with your headphones. What are you listening to?
I’m really sorry to say this, but I don’t have those things. I don’t like that. I don’t want to walk around listening to music and not listening to what’s happening. It’s bad enough that I’m glued to my phone. I’m not going to go there with music. But right now I’m also at a disadvantage, because I don’t have a good sound system. So I’ve been listening to music on my computer and I just don’t like it as much. Like, when I had a good sound system, I used to put on music and just walk around, drinking a glass of wine, just listening to it.

In your writing, you slip in and out of time seamlessly. In Veronica, you’re like a time bandit. We’re talking a really adult version of Madeleine L’Engle. The book spans decades of Alison’s life—from her teenage years in Paris in the 70s to New York in the 80s, where she meets Veronica, and she’s narrating when she’s in her fifties. There are certain sentences that stretch between two different moments. Considering the amount of time the book covers, there has to be a level of trust—in your own ability to do that, but also that the reader will trust this time machine you’re driving. Was that hard to do? Did you question that?
Yeah, I did question if it was a good idea or not. I was afraid it would be too arty, or just too hard to follow. Yeah, I wondered about that.

For me, that kind of movement through time made everything move faster. It made my heart beat faster, especially as the book went on.
Well, thank you. I did it, for one thing, well, I felt like I had to blend the times because the book is focused on something in the past, and the narrator is in the present. But also because I was at an age where I felt like time was blending for me, personally, in a way that it hadn’t before.

How so?
I think when you get to a certain age, and for some people it may be in their forties or for other people it may be in their sixties—I’m not sure—but I think for everybody it happens that your relationship with time changes and you see the future or the present, and it becomes like a palimpsest for the past, and you just kind of blur things. And it’s not necessarily in a confused way, but sometimes it is. Like, you can talk to very old people and they’ll think something happened. Recently, my mother thought that her mother gave her the book, Born Free by Elsa the Lioness. And that’s not possible. My mother wasn’t alive when that book was written. But in her mind it absolutely must have been that way. She’s blending something. I think that starts to happen in middle age. Not in the sense that you’re confused, but that your connections of when things happen in time, spatially, are just different.

So, let’s talk about sexuality. Never have I read fiction regarding sexuality that made me feel quite the same way—that way I felt when reading Veronica.
When you say “that way,” what do you mean?

As a male, reading about sex—this beautifully painful account of health, illness, death, with all of this sometimes brutal sex—I felt my own mortality. I became very aware of my heartbeat and my breathing. Thinking about all the cigarettes I had smoked a long time ago. It made me anxious. It hurt. And I saw all of this through the eyes of Alison, a model, who is absolutely nothing like me. At all. I related to it. Absolutely, in the moment, related to it. And it’s hard enough for me to be in the moment, ever.
Me, too.

At one point Alison says she sees how men can look at pictures and feel things. She’s trying to see the world through the eyes of the other, and reading the book as a man, I was doing the same thing backwards, through her eyes. Have you found that the reaction to your writing has been starkly different along gender lines? That men have a different response? Like, me, how I am getting super uncomfortable talking about it with you right now?
Oh, it doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all. I don’t really know. Someone wrote an article about how horrible she thinks men are when they write about me. And it’s true that some male critics have been unusually nasty. But it’s also true that once, a long time ago, for my own curiosity, I went through all the reviews and divided them into male and female. And then I added up where the most negative ones came from. They came from women. So, I think women are more likely to relate to my writing in a superficial way, because most of my characters are women. I don’t really know if there is a predictable breakdown.

I thought my last book, The Mare, would not be read by men at all. The Mare is all female characters with specifically female issues. And there isn’t a whole lot of sex in it. Even the horses are female. But men read it and liked it. I mean I don’t know how many. I can’t really say for sure. I am thinking, though, that some men seem to view it with horror that seems gendered.

Recently, Veronica was republished in England and my editor decided to have a personal friend of hers write an introduction. I can’t remember the guy’s name. He’s an English writer whom she says is very respected, but I’ve never heard of him. And he spent a lot of time—and he was a fan, apparently—talking about the horrifying, degrading imagery that I use about men. In one of these horrifying examples, Alison was thinking about a guy, and I hope you don’t mind me using this language. She’s having sex with somebody, and she can feel his asshole tingling on the end of his spine. In the context of writing, that does not seem especially degrading or at all degrading to me. If you were saying that to someone, it might be different, depending on who they are and how you said it. But the idea of somebody thinking that, in private, in a fictional novel, I don’t understand. I scratched him doing the introduction and I did it myself. And I wrote back to [my editor] and said, “Has this guy ever read Philip Roth or Saul Bellow? What makes him so shocked by this?”

In conversation it might be a shocking remark, but not in a novel, in somebody’s head. And that’s what I mean by politeness not applying to literature. There’s a different standard than at a party. I really did wonder if he would have reacted that way if it was a male writing about a female he was having sex with.

Well, I think there is maybe a double standard when it comes to writing about sex. Men might get more of a pass, right? And I’ve never read anything about sex that was written quite like that.
Thanks. Except I would normally disagree with that. I think women get more of a pass. For sexist reasons, actually, sexuality is considered the purview of women. It’s like women’s area of authority. Women can write really dirty things without being criticized as much. Are you aware of Nicholson Baker’s book The Fermata?

No.
It’s a pretty dirty book. It’s a fantasy book. Have you read him at all?

No, I haven’t. I guess I should.
Beautiful writer. Line by line, probably the best writer in America, in my opinion.  Line by line, though, not by the whole content, necessarily. Well, The Fermata was one of his lighter books. He’s better known for Vox, because Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky read it together. Or for The Mezzanine. But The Fermata is about somebody who can stop time, and he uses it to take women’s clothes off…

Oh! Yes…he masturbates on their clothes?
He masturbates, but he doesn’t do it on their clothes. My, that book got outraged reviews. People said it was violent, degrading, disgusting. It was none of those things. It was a totally harmless fantasy. And I think if a woman had written it, it would have been different. Have you ever read Natsuo Kirino?

No. You know what? Not only have I probably not read any of the books you’re mentioning, I’m probably going to get a big complex about it. 
No. Don’t worry. I’ve hardly read anything. But Natsuo Kirino, one of her books that I really like, in one of the final scenes is this guy who has been stalking her and finally gets her tied up and he’s planning to torture her and he’s cutting her and he’s raping her. And she actually responds to him. But she’s actually tricking him. She ends up killing him. And he almost likes it. She cuts his throat and he dies slowly. I don’t remember the words, but it’s almost like he says, “I love you” in the end. If a man wrote that scene, he’d be considered the equivalent of a murderer. He wouldn’t be able to show his face in public.

Well, I guess I’ll have to read that now…
It’s true, though. I think women are allowed to be much more outrageous sexually, in general, than men. What some of the male critics, who have been nasty, are responding to—and this one guy said that reading me was like being sodomized by an icy dildo—

Um, does he know what that’s like?
[Laughs] Oh, I suspect he doesn’t. Because if he did, he would never make such a ridiculous comparison. But, in a way, it’s a huge compliment, because I have never read anyone in my life who would make me feel even remotely like that. So he must think I’m some kind of badass.

What I think makes people like that uncomfortable isn’t the level of sexual detail. I think it makes them feel emotionally uncomfortable. Because they feel emotionally exposed. Lots of people write about sex very graphically.

Switching gears, you really describe the beauty and sometimes ugliness of voices. The sound of them. And you do it visually, too. Alison will describe how something looks as a sound. Are you the kind of person who can be enthralled, or just totally turned off, by the timbre of someone’s voice?
Oh yeah. I’m really, really voice responsive. When I was very young, at home, in the other room doing homework, some guy came to see one of my sisters. And I was so revolted by his voice, I could hardly bare to listen to it. And when he left I walked in the room and I said, “Who was that?” And I said, “He’s a horrible person.”

It turned out he was, actually. He had sexually molested somebody and later he made obscene calls to one of my sisters. I’m not saying I can do that all the time, but I am very voice reactive. And I can even fall in love with somebody just by the sound of their voice. I mean, I may not stay in love with them [laughs]. And it might not mean they’re a wonderful person. Although, interestingly, when I first heard my husband’s voice, I didn’t like it. But that changed. I’m not completely wedded to that impression. But it does mean something.

I read you once say that Debbie from “Secretary” was no older than eighteen. And I thought, “Wow. What an erudite, literate eighteen-year-old.”
Really, you think?

Oh yeah. That first-person narrator in that third-person universe? Totally.
It’s pretty simple, I think.

But what we can get to here is the idea of the reliability of a narrator. In Veronica, you use the first-person narrator, and you nailed the trust—the narrator was so reliable. How do you confer that trust? What advice do you give students to find that place?
I’ve always found the concept of the reliable versus the unreliable narrator peculiar, because I think all narrators are unreliable [laughs]. People tell you what they saw or what they think or what they felt, and they may be telling you the truth, but it might not at all be what someone else saw happen. Like, people always call Humbert Humbert an unreliable narrator. He’s very reliable. He’ll tell you exactly what he thought and felt in a lot of detail. And you also get a very clear sense of what Lolita is experiencing through him. But I don’t think of it as unreliable. I think more in terms, and this sounds really corny, I think more in terms of, “Do I care what this narrator thinks and feels? Can he engage me?”

With students, the problem I see most often is that I don’t get a sense of what their narrators care about. What they want. What matters to them. That’s a bigger issue to me than whether or not they’re reliable in some way.

Would you agree if I were to say that you are hard on your readers?
I don’t know [laughs]. It probably depends on the reader. I’m sure some people read my stuff and think it’s fun. And some people might think it’s boring.

Your writing? Boring?

Sure. I think Bad Behavior is boring, quite frankly. I had to read it for an audio book. I was just like, “Oh…”

For some readers it is hard. I guess I do know that for a fact. I’ve seen complaints. I’ve seen people talk about how hard it is. So it must be. But it’s not something I set out to do.

I guess we have a theme here, of conditional versus unconditional. Reading your work, I found it very hard on the reader. Not in a pejorative sense. I found it absolutely conditionally loving. It gives me everything I need, but as you once said, there is a thin line between absolute excitement and humiliation—and you thrive on that line.
I said that?

Yep.
Where?

I think in New York Times Magazine, actually.
Wow. I never read that one.

You’re tackling incredibly emotionally intense, sexually intense, illness, health, and death…
It’s true. That line.

It’s so interesting that you bring that up because a student of mine just workshopped a story; the ending is a scene in which the male character is really ashamed of his body and his girlfriend is really beautiful and she decides she wants him to pose naked for pictures. And it’s a potentially very powerful scene because it can potentially be a very horrible experience. And he’s just so uncomfortable. It would be very much a thin line. And it could be one of those things where it could be great or just really, really awful. Or both.

I’d say great and awful at the same time would be the goal, right?
Oh, yeah. For a lot of people, yeah. Because it’s the whole picture.

I think that’s what I would say about your writing. 
Well, thank you.

 

Joseph Master is the executive director of marketing and digital strategy at Drexel University in Philadelphia. His freelance work has appeared in newspapers, magazines, television commercials, and on tiny screens across the nation. He studied creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh.

Mary Gaitskill, whose most recent book is the essay collection Somebody With a Little Hammer.  (Credit: Derek Shapton)

Where the Past Begins: An Interview With Amy Tan

by

Alison Singh Gee

10.13.17

Online Only

This past summer, while speaking on a panel at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers conference, Amy Tan surprised an audience full of aspiring authors with an admission: “There are times when I think to myself, ‘I’ve lost it completely,’” she said. “‘That’s it. It’s over. I will never write again.’” She shook her head and added, “It took me eight years to write the last novel. It seems like with every novel, it gets harder and harder.”

Tan, the author of six novels, including The Joy Luck Club (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1989), as well as two children’s books, struggled with writing her last novel, The Valley of Amazement, first exploring one storyline for about five years, ditching much of it, and basically starting over, finally completing the book some three years later. Published by Ecco in 2013, the novel followed the odyssey of a young biracial courtesan as she searches for her American madam during the early twentieth-century in China.

As she grappled with her voice on the page, her public voice—on Facebook, notably—was becoming pointedly more personal and urgent, poking at topics that ranged from the whimsical (her beloved terriers and her latest sculptural haircuts) to the controversial (politicians she despises). In post after post on social media, Tan examined and confronted the world around her and the world within her. It was during this period that she began e-mailing with her editor, Daniel Halpern at Ecco, who she started working with on The Valley of Amazement, a little more than a decade after Faith Sales, her longtime editor at Putnam, died in 1999.

Halpern would send Tan a question, and the author would fire off a witty retort, or sometimes a very long missive. Once, for instance, Halpern asked the writer for a synopsis of her yet-to-be-written novel and Tan shot back a four-thousand-word response about why she hates writing synopses. All of these missives had a vital quality in common: spontaneity.

Buoyed by the vibrancy of their dashed-off e-mails, Tan decided to write a memoir, Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir, published this month by Ecco. The book collects Tan’s unguarded, free-flowing writing in response to family documents, personal photographs and journal entries she had collected throughout her life, which began in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she grew up the daughter of immigrant parents from China. The results of this personal research deeply surprised the author. In examining photographs of her grandmother and the clothing she wore, Tan discovered that her grandmother had most likely been a courtesan. In rereading letters she and her mother had exchanged before her death in 1999, the author realized they had remained close, even during the times that Tan tried to distance herself, and that her mother had felt that her daughter had truly understood her. The relationship between a mother and a daughter has formed the basis of much of Tan’s work, from The Joy Luck Club, which consists of stories about the experiences of four Chinese American mothers and their daughters, to The Bonesetter’s Daughter (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2001), about an immigrant Chinese woman and her American-born daughter.

Tan, who readily admits that in writing her novels she labors over every sentence, discovered something vital about her writing process: that if she just shut out her self-conscious voice and wrote, she could capture something vital, intimate, and authentic on the page. “Writing this book was very painful,” she says. “But it was exhilarating, too.” 

I recently spoke with Tan about her approach to memoir and how this shift in process changed the way she views her fiction writing. 

You’ve written six novels, two children’s books, and one collection of essays. A memoir is a departure of sorts. Why did you decide to switch literary camps?
I would say I was lured into writing this book. It was the suggestion of my publisher, Dan Halpern, who thought I needed an in-between book—as in, between my novels. At first he thought we could put together a whole book of our e-mails. I said, “That’s a terrible idea.” But he kept insisting that it would be good. We could turn our e-mails from when we were first getting together into essays about writing. Then I looked at them and said, “This is never going to work.” And he finally agreed.

But by then this book had already been announced. And I was stuck writing it. At first I started writing something esoteric about language, but it was coming out all wrong and stiff. So I decided I was just going to write whatever comes to mind. It was going to be a memoir but it was going to be spontaneous.

But you’re known as a literary craftsperson, laboring over every sentence. How did you decide that spontaneity was the way forward?
This was one of the things I learned about creativity. You have to let go of self-consciousness. When I started thinking about this book, I knew that if I felt self-conscious while writing, it would probably come out bit by bit and it would not be as honest.

So I told Dan I would send him fifteen to twenty pages of writing every week. I imposed this crazy deadline on myself. I was just writing spontaneous sentences and not doing much in the way of revision. And this is what came out.

Throughout the writing of this book I was both excited and nervous. I didn’t know what I was going to find. It was like when you go to the circus and you’re about to see the next act. You’re looking forward to it but you’re also scared out of your mind. You’re worried that the trapeze artist is going to die. The process had a suspense to it. Even though I was writing about my life, here, I was writing about what I felt about certain experiences. There’s a difference between a narrative of facts and what happened in your life.

This was about what I felt about certain experiences and the association of that experience with another, and another beyond that. It was about who I am as an adult and reflecting on the core of these experiences.

What was your process? How did you organize the mining of these moments in your life?
I had collected all these things from my family and my own life, not ever thinking that I would write from them. I am sentimental; I have things from my high school, like my student-body card. I had like eighty boxes of this stuff in my garage. I kept them with the idea that I would one day go through them and get rid of a bunch and keep a couple of things. Then I thought, I will just pull something out of the boxes, and if it intrigues me I will write about it. So the process was: I stuck my hand in a box and what came out I wrote about.

It wasn’t as though I had it all lined up, like I wanted to write about this and this. The process was surprising, shocking. It was exhilarating, a mix of emotions. It brought about those things you get out of writing—you know, you have these epiphanies and discoveries. It was an affirmation of why we write.

How did this differ from writing your novels?
Writing fiction allows me the subterfuge of it being fiction. I can change things from real life. I can still go to an emotional core but not as intensely.

Fiction is a way to bring up emotions that I have and to get a better understanding of the situation. But I found that writing memoir brought up ten times the amount of emotion I have while writing fiction. This was truly an unexpected book. I kept telling Dan, “I hate this book.” It seems so personal, like an invasion of privacy. It’s as though I let people into my bedroom and into my darkest moments. I haven’t had time to really meditate over this as I would have liked—you know that word: process. I haven’t even had reflection time to sort out my emotions.

You seem to have lived a remarkably dramatic life and so did your mother, so did your grandmother. Your grandmother was likely a courtesan, one who committed suicide by swallowing raw opium. Your mother, in choosing to leave behind an abusive husband in China, also had to leave her daughters behind as she moved to America for a new life. And I read an article in which you mentioned that you had been sexually molested as a child, held up at gun point, experienced the death of both your father and older brother within six months of each other, and lived with a mother who threatened to kill herself on many occasions, and threatened to kill you with a cleaver on another occasion. In taking stock of this generational trajectory, did you have it in your head that you would one day make sense of all this as a writer?
Well, that’s what I was doing all along with my fiction. I was writing about things, and these moments would come up spontaneously, intuitively, naturally, as part of a narrative in which I was trying to make sense of a story.

For example, when I was writing The Joy Luck Club, I was writing to understand my mother more. But not to the extent that I did in writing this particular book—there was so much turmoil. When I examined for this memoir, in a very concentrated way, what it was like to live with my mother and her suicidal rages, it was so painful. The horror of seeing her put her leg out of a car and knowing that she might possibly die.

Is it meaningful to your memoir writing that your mother, who you’ve described as your muse, died almost two decades ago? How has that freed you to write autobiographically?
I wonder every once in a while what my mother would have thought about the things I wrote in this memoir. Would she have been upset or really happy? Would she be angry? When she was alive, anytime I wrote about her, even when I wrote terrible things, she was thrilled because it was about her. I could have written that she tried to kill me, and she would have been delighted. She’d say something like, “Now you understand how I feel.” My mother was an emotional exhibitionist.

My father, a minister, would have been wounded. In this book I wrote these things about him being sincere but shallow. He depended too much on the pat phrases of the Bible. Rather than truly feeling what somebody was going through, he wanted to solve things and be a good minister. He was so blind to what was going on in his own family. He didn’t have compassion for my little brother and me and what we might have been going through.

Was there difficult material that you left out of the book? If so, how do you feel about that decision now?
We took out about ten or twelve pieces and there was one, actually, that I debated over. Dan and I agreed that it was a little too risky. It was a letter I wrote to a minister based on having been abused when I was fifteen by their youth minister. This person I was writing to was not the minister when this happened. My point in the piece was that his church is a house of worship and it’s a continuous fellowship. I wrote that he is proud of the story of his church but he has to add this to its history. His house of worship has a stain on it.

I finally said, “We have to take this piece out. It goes off the path. It doesn’t enhance what I’m trying to write about.”

Are you happy with that decision or do you regret it?
I’m happy with the decision. Sometimes you write something and it becomes almost retribution, a desire to get even. In this memoir, I could have written about betrayal. I could have written about people who deeply wounded me, but why? I could have written about the fact that my mother went through her life feeling betrayed and that is a mark she put on me. I now have very strong feelings about betrayal and condescension. But I don’t want betrayals to be a dominant part of my life, and if I had written about them I would have given them more importance than I wanted to give them.

How did you push past your emotional blocks to include difficult information and lines of questioning?
In this book I say something about writing and honesty. And it has to do with spontaneity. If you are going to get to some emotional core and truth, you have to write spontaneously. You have to let go of that frontal lobe that says, “Oh, but my father will read this.” You can look at your writing later and say, “Oh my God, my father is going to kill me when he reads this, or he’s going to kill himself.” And then you will know what to leave in or take out. Or you wait until your father’s death. But if you start out in your writing having these concerns, maybe you are writing things that are vindictive. Or maybe you are not ready to write these scenes. Maybe you need to write them later. Maybe you need to take it from a different angle and it will come out in a different way. But I think that if you always write with compassion and understanding, then you stand a good chance of having that person understand why you are writing this. That you weren’t trying to be vindictive. Being vindictive is an automatic no.

Will you take this technique of spontaneity back to your fiction writing? How else will this foray into memoir affect your work as a novelist?
I always thought as I wrote fiction that I was making discoveries, deep discoveries. I was surprised by how much deeper these went as I was writing this memoir. How much more trouble the memories are and how much more risk I had to take to go into it.

Fiction offers us a subterfuge—I keep using this word—it’s almost similar to donning a costume when I go onstage as a ridiculous singer [as she does as a member of the literary rock band, The Rock Bottom Remainders, whose other members have included Stephen King, Scott Turow, Barbara Kingsolver, and others]. If I wear the costume, I can do ridiculous singing because it’s supposed to be in the guise of a silly person.

I am much closer to who I am when I am writing fiction, but there is still a separation. I write my fiction in the first person but writing memoir is truly first person.

I wonder if, in writing fiction, I am going to be as close to the material now, as I was as writing the memoir. With fiction I will still have that protective mechanism. For my memoir I fell into this safety zone of fiction when I wrote that memory of being in the car with my mother as she threatened to commit suicide. I had to write that in the third person. At first, I wrote it in the first person and I had to take it in the third person because it was so painful. I could only get it out in the third person.

At the same time, I think that writing fiction can be very fun. It allows you to be reflective, and at the same time and there’s the art and craft of fiction that I like. So I don’t think I would ever continue to just write memoir.

You mention that you have a “messy narrative style,” that you might start a novel using one voice speaking from a particular period of time but then you shift to another voice speaking from another period of time. Does this have to do with the dual narrative you lived with your mother?
This seems to be true about every book I’ve written. I start in the present and then go into the past. I think this has to do with an interior sense that whatever is happening in one particular time has a connection to another. I’m really fascinated by what that connection might be.

It’s not always a direct connection. For example, my father was a Christian minister and very devout. That does not mean that the connection to me was that I became a Christian minister or very devout. But what it did do for me was made me question what I do believe and why. And also that I am interested in having a purpose in life, rather than a random one. 

At Squaw Valley you said something surprising—and probably very buoying to many writers—that sometimes you face a blank page and think that you have lost the ability to write another word. But then you start to write again. What’s gets you over that hump and onto writing the next page?
I sometimes have this existential dread that I will never write again. Or, I’m not a writer, or this book isn’t going anywhere. Everyone is going to be disappointed. It makes me sick. Then I just say, “Get over it, you are not the end of the world.”

I’m not a disciplined writer at all. I would never want to convey that and make other writers anxious.

What happened with this memoir is that I gave myself a self-imposed deadline—fifteen to twenty pages a week—and I allowed myself to write bad pages. That’s the thing. Allow yourself to write bad pages and just continue to write spontaneously and in that writer’s mind. Write as much as you can without self-consciousness over bad sentences. Write knowing it’s going to be imperfect—that’s important. Just press on. You might look at it later and maybe you have to throw everything away. But there might be something in there that is valuable, that you can keep.

What three or four qualities make a “literary writer”?
Ah, that’s a terrible term. It has triggered a response equal to what the word “liberals” has attracted from Trump supporters. Being a literary writer might mean that you think you’re better than everybody else, or what literary means is that you’re incomprehensible to about 90 percent of mainstream readers.

But, okay. A literary writer is serious about craft, and doing something original, writing a story that contains an important idea. Literary writing has an important theme and it comes through naturally, logically, imperatively.

What qualities make a superstar writer?
Luck. And some kind of style. There is a great deal of luck involved. You have to get recognized and read. You’re lucky if your book falls into the right hands and if it didn’t come out the day after 9/11. Beyond that, it is having established a voice that people enjoy or want to hear from and being able to provide that.

Superstar writers are not necessarily the best writers. Some have written the same book over and over again. They may have a formula that readers want. Superstar writers have that down. They can be depended upon to deliver what readers like to read. I’m not counting myself as a superstar writer, by the way.

What’s next for you?
My new book is a novel, The Memory of Desire. It’s a book that I dreamed up. The structure, the characters and the setting—they literally came to me in a dream. It is so gratifying to get the setting down. For me, it’s a major part of starting a book. But keep in mind, what works for me may not work for you. 

 

Alison Singh Gee is an award-winning journalist and the author of the Hong Kong-India memoir, Where the Peacocks Sing, about her comical and complicated relationship with her husband’s family palace in Northern India. She teaches creative nonfiction and literary travel writing at UCLA Extension. Find her at Facebook.com/AlisonSinghGee.

Amy Tan, whose new book is Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir, published by Ecco in October. (Credit: Julian Johnson)

The Heart of the Novel: Nicholas Montemarano and Eric Puchner

11.6.17

Online Only

If you want to lose and then find yourself in stories of modern family life, look no further than the fiction of Nicholas Montemarano and Eric Puchner. Both authors peer into the beautiful messiness of contemporary America by way of its homes: the high stakes of our daily rituals, the turmoil beneath serenity, the white lies and longings that hold it all together. Puchner is author of the beloved story collections Last Day on Earth (Scribner, 2017) and Music Through the Floor (Scribner, 2005), as well as the novel Model Home (Scribner, 2010), which won the California Book Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Montemarano is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, The Book of Why (Little, Brown, 2013) and A Fine Place (Context Books, 2002), and the short story collection If the Sky Falls (Louisiana State University Press, 2005), a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. Now he’s celebrating the release of his third novel, The Senator’s Children, published this month by Tin House Books. Centered on two sisters who have never met, it is an intimate family drama about a political scandal and the personal aftermath. Puchner read an advance copy and was enthralled. “This engrossing, brilliantly structured novel takes a familiar situation—the implosion of a presidential candidate’s career—and creates a thing of heartbreaking beauty out of it,” he writes. “By asking whether forgiveness can conquer blame, and whether we might even be able to treat strangers like family, The Senator’s Children feels like exactly the kind of novel we need.”

So Eric Puchner and Nicholas Montemarano got in touch, and what started as an e-mail exchange in the fall of 2017 turned into a literary deep-dive. The two discussed scandals and second chances, finding the heart of the novel, and blurring the personal and political.

Eric Puchner: The Senator’s Children feels like a departure for you in terms of material. One of the things I admire about it, in fact, is that you take a familiar subject, one that’s sort of ripped from the history books—the infidelity of a presidential candidate and its ramifications on his career and family—and find a brand new story to tell.  What compelled you to write about a political scandal?

Nicholas Montemarano: This novel does feel like a departure in some ways—I never expected to write about a political scandal—but in other ways, it continues a preoccupation of mine. So much of what I’ve written—I realized this only after I completed The Senator’s Children—is about families, specifically how they cope with the aftermath of tragedy. My first urge to write this novel came after listening to a late-night talk show host lampoon a politician whose career and life were falling apart. I was compelled less by the fact that this man was a politician and more that he was a public figure being mocked when privately he and his family must have been in great pain. I had an especially strong reaction to the audience’s laughter. I may have been the only person in America, for all I know, who felt sorry for this man, his wife, and his children. We like to see the mighty fall, and then we love the redemption story that often follows. But this politician—the one who was the butt of so many jokes—there wasn’t going to be a second act for him. Not a chance, not after what he did. I couldn’t help but wonder what the rest of life would be like for a person who had become such a pariah.

EP: That’s another thing I admire about the book, the sympathy you show each and every character—not only David, the disgraced senator, but also “the other woman” who in some ways conspires to take David down. Was there a particular character you found hard to empathize with at first? Who was the trickiest character to write your way into?

NM: David Christie was unfaithful to his wife while he was running for president—and while she was battling cancer. Can you feel sympathy for someone who did that? Well, that was one question I set out to ask in my novel. The answer, for me, was surprisingly immediate: yes, of course. The challenge, then, was to bring out those aspects of David that might evoke empathy in readers. On the other hand, Rae, the woman with whom David has the affair—she was more of a challenge. In early drafts, she wasn’t very sympathetic. She was too interested in cashing in on the affair; she wanted to write a book about it and still hoped, years after the affair, to win over David. But she struck me as a caricature, a cultural footnote you might see on a reality TV show (in fact, I had her on a reality TV show in the first draft). So I had to dig deeper and allow her to be flawed—she can be needy and self-absorbed—but sympathetic. In her case, her saving grace is that she loves her daughter.

EP: We’ve been talking about David and the other woman, but the novel’s called The Senator’s Children. For me the emotional heart of it is the story of the two sisters, Betsy and Avery, who don’t know each other because one of them is the living proof of their father’s scandal. It’s just such a fraught, thematically rich situation. Did you know from the beginning that you would focus on David’s two daughters and their very divergent trajectories in life? And that these trajectories would eventually cross?

NM: I was just talking about this last week with my students. I showed them the pages in my notebook from 2011 when I wrote down my first thoughts about this novel. It was called The Senator. But a few weeks later, the working title became The Senator’s Daughter because I decided that its focus—and its narrator—would be Avery, the daughter born from the affair. I wrote the first paragraph—which no longer exists in the novel—and then one page later in my notes, I wrote: The Senator’s Children. I could see myself changing my mind and discovering what the heart of the novel would be. Even at that early stage, I knew who David Christie’s three children were and that his two daughters, estranged from their father to varying degrees, would collide late in the novel. I wrote pages of notes about them. It’s amazing to me that, after five years and so many drafts, much of those first notes I wrote about them remain true. Some things we know from the very beginning, and other things we have to write our way towards knowing.

EP: I wonder about that in relation to the novel’s structure. Another thing that impresses me is the way it moves so unexpectedly through time, toggling between the mid-eighties, the early nineties, 2010, and (in the final section) 1977. I found this to be the source of a lot of the book’s poignancy and power. (In some ways, it feels like the real subject of the novel is time and its irrevocability.) Was the jumping-around-in-time structure something you knew you were going to have from the beginning, or is it something that evolved during the drafting process?   

NM: I really like what you just said about time and its irrevocability—yes! If I had to choose two words that seem to capture my books thus far, they would be: time and regret. What is the life span of a terrible mistake? Can time heal even our deepest wounds? Or do those wounds fester and multiply? I’ve written three novels, and all of them move around in time. It’s difficult for me to imagine writing a novel that doesn’t; it just feels natural to me. As a reader, I’m drawn to nonlinear narratives. Many of my favorite books—The Things They Carried, Jesus’ Son, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City—jump around in time. Or skip ahead, like the “Time Passes” section of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. Or move backwards like Harold Pinter’s play Betrayal. Julia Pierpont’s Among the Ten Thousand Things, one of my favorite novels in recent years, includes surprising flash-forwards. Time jumps can be so powerful. We’re here, then suddenly we’ve jumped ahead, or back, and important things happen in that white space. I remember turning the page to Part Two of your novel, Model Home, and seeing that time had jumped ahead a year—even a small time jump like that excites me. I’m like, what did I miss? What happened between those two pages? The ending of The Senator’s Children, the final jump back in time—as soon as it happened, it thrilled me; I knew it was right.

EP: I want to ask you about the language in the book, which feels whittled down to its very essence—there’s a kind of spareness to it that feels evocative and hard-boiled at the same time.  Reading it, I couldn’t help thinking of Babel’s dictum that “only a genius can afford two adjectives to a noun,” except that it seems to me you’ve decided to get rid of adjectives altogether. Is this ultra-spare voice something that comes easily and naturally to you? Or, like Isaac Babel, do you “go over each sentence, time and again,” taking out anything extraneous?

NM: Eventually, I had to give myself over to sparer prose. During revision, it won me over and convinced me that it would be best for the novel. The first draft was bigger, louder, stylistically and formally explosive, multiple narrators, very voice-driven. With each draft, more of that fell away. The aspects of the first draft I was most enamored with were exposed as just that—writing I was too enamored with and attached to. The revision process was one of whittling down me, so to speak. The novel couldn’t be about me being a good writer or making some interesting moves; everything had to be at the service of the story. And so with each revision the novel became quieter and more intimate. Whenever my editor and I spoke about the later drafts of the novel, we always came back to intimacy—that was the novel’s strength, she kept telling me, and I came to believe her. It’s amazing to see how much the novel changed through revision—more than any other book I’ve written.

EP: Speaking of change, the biggest change that happened between your writing of this novel and its publication was the election of Trump. You wrote the novel before Trump’s infamous Hollywood Access tape, which—unlike David’s indiscretion—didn’t end up crushing Trump’s chances at the presidency and makes the Monica Lewinski scandal seem almost quaint. Has Trump’s ascendancy changed your perspective on the novel in any way? Would you write the same book in 2017?

NM: I would. Trump, of course, has reset almost everything when it comes to politics. But families—it seems to me that they remain the same. And I really see The Senator’s Children as a family novel more than a political novel. I set David’s run for the presidency in 1991 and 1992 mostly by necessity: I needed Avery, his daughter outside his marriage, to be in college during the present narrative in 2010. But setting the political scandal twenty-five years ago turned out to be interesting. I had a chance to revisit some of the political sex scandals around that time. In the case of Gary Hart in 1987, a photograph brought down his run for the Democratic nomination. But during the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton was able to overcome allegations of infidelity and win his party’s nomination and the White House. David Christie’s fate was closer to Hart’s. Or John Edwards’s in 2008. Some readers of The Senator’s Children have told me that the political world depicted in my novel feels, in the Age of Trump, like a throwback to a more civil time. Politics, of course, has always been a rough sport—and a fascinating one. But I’m a writer more interested in the private—what happens behind closed doors when the shit hits the fan, how families cope, how people lose each other, or hold on.

Novelists Nicholas Montemarano (left), author of The Senator’s Children; and Eric Puchner.

The Problem of Entitlement: A Question of Respect

by

Steve Almond

September/October 2014
8.20.14

In Print and Online

This past spring I took a position as a visiting writer at a well-respected MFA program. My students were by and large intelligent and serious, but there were a few moments when I found them—what’s the word I’m looking for here—exasperating.

One day before the fiction workshop, for instance, we got into a discussion about the Best American Short Stories series, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. To my astonishment, a number of students made comments indicating their disdain for the annual anthology.

“Wait a second,” I said. “The stories in those collections are always great.”

There was an awkward pause. Then one of them said, “You’re being ironic, right?”

At this point, I sort of lost it. I told my students that they had every right to dislike particular stories, but that dismissing them entirely was foolish. Then I added something along the lines of, “Why don’t you guys publish a story in Best American and then you can sit in judgment of them.”

It was not my finest moment as a teacher. (And, for the record, I later apologized to the entire class.) It was an impulsive reaction to what I’ve come to think of over the years as the Problem of Entitlement.

I mean by this that a significant number of the students I’ve encountered in creative writing programs display a curious arrogance toward published authors, as well as an inflated sense of their own talents and importance. The same attitudes often prevail in those online precincts where new and emerging writers congregate.

In my own experience, the Problem of Entitlement has gotten worse over the past decade and a half, and for three distinct reasons: first, the growing competitive pressures on aspiring writers; second, the pace and ease of judgment fostered by digital technology; and finally, the insidious cultural tendency of students to think of themselves as customers.

Here’s what I suspect was going on in that fiction workshop: My students were actually in a kind of quiet panic. Most of them had made significant sacrifices to attend graduate school. They were taking a big risk, both financially and psychologically. And they were smart enough to recognize, on some level, that the odds against their ever placing a story in the Best American anthology were pretty steep.

Rather than face the reality of their challenge—that they were going to have to spend thousands of doubt-choked hours working to improve and absorb tons of rejection and live in a state of economic and creative insecurity—they defaulted to a more convenient reality: that such anthologies are full of hacks whose success (as one student was later kind enough to explain to me) boils down to nepotism.

In other words, because they felt overmatched, they assumed a posture of superiority.

This defense mechanism is hardly unique to writers. Every graduate program in this country is, to some extent, a fishbowl filled with ambitious students who have no clue how big and cold the ocean really is.

But the harsh truth looming over students of writing, as compared with those studying law or medicine or engineering, is that only a fraction will find success in their chosen field—that is, will go on to publish books—and most of these will have to discover other means of supporting themselves and their families. Just graduating from a writing program doesn’t make you an author, let alone a celebrated one. It’s only the beginning of the process.

I myself was a schmuck in grad school: insecure, needy, and provocative in ways that only years of therapy would reveal. I did not like myself very much, and you wouldn’t have either.

But one thing I didn’t do in grad school was take the experience for granted. I was nearly thirty when I arrived, having worked as a newspaper reporter for seven years. I knew the world wasn’t clamoring to read my drab little short stories, and that it was going to be a long time before I got good enough to have a book of them published. (In fact, it would take eight years.)

Toward the end of my first year, our professor asked us to read a long piece in Harper’s magazine called “Perchance to Dream.” It was a fifteen-thousand-word lament by an obscure novelist named Jonathan Franzen about the peril of writing novels in an age dominated by visual media. As a literary tadpole, I found the message terrifying. But Franzen clearly had a point to make, and while he seemed somewhat irritable as a person, his prose was lucid and thoughtful.

It was shocking to me, therefore, that our professor—himself a young novelist—spent a good portion of class tearing into the rhetorical excesses of the piece, with the enthusiastic help of other students.

At a certain point I said, rather foolishly, “I don’t get the point of this discussion. It sounds like we’re just tearing down the writer.”

My point wasn’t to defend Franzen, who certainly didn’t need my help. I was troubled by the antagonism that our professor was not only permitting but instigating. Wasn’t the goal of grad school to pick apart your own writing, rather than that of published writers?

The Franzen piece is particularly haunting to revisit today because Franzen was writing in 1996, an era when Google was still just a big number and the radical new technology was e-mail, which we checked at the library.

The world of grad students two decades later is a lot different. Nearly all the students have smartphones, which they bring to class. Nearly all of them spend more time staring at screens than at books.

And the students I encounter seem to value reading less and less. I remember one especially galling workshop that I taught a few years ago, in which I asked the participants to read a single story, “Guests of the Nation” by Frank O’Connor. Hardly any of them bothered. They didn’t seem to understand—they were too entitled to understand—that the production of great literature requires a deep engagement with great literature. In fact, they were more likely to talk about a movie or TV show, or what they just posted on Facebook, than the last great book they read.

The Internet is what you make of it, obviously. And there are aspiring writers who use digital technology to read and research and seek the counsel of their peers. But the Internet has also been a great aggregator of anxiety and an enabler of our worst tendencies. It has allowed us to trumpet our own opinions, to win attention by broadcasting our laziest and cruelest judgments, to grind axes in public. It has made us feel, in some perverse sense, that we are entitled to do so.

This, I suspect, is why so many of the discussions of the assigned reading in the nonfiction class I taught this past spring began with students talking about why they didn’t like the author. This one was sexist. That one was self-involved. And so on.

While I appreciated the critical acumen of my students—they often made excellent points—there was an air of entitlement to these judgments. They seemed reluctant to examine the aspects of craft and storytelling at which these authors excelled, and that they might therefore learn from them.

One day, Elizabeth Gilbert’s name came up and, well, you can pretty much guess what happened next: Students began slagging her for receiving an advance to write her memoir Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia and for writing “from privilege,” a favorite complaint. I asked the student who was carping the loudest if she had read that book—or indeed, any of Gilbert’s other five books. She had not.

It might sound like I’m describing “snark” here. But while the Problem of Entitlement and the Problem of Snark are related, they’re not the same.

Snark is a conscious attempt to cast aspersion for narcissistic reward. Writers who use social media, or other public forums, to dis other writers are seeking to convert resentment into attention. It’s a tool of self-promotion.

Entitlement operates at a more basic and often unconscious level. It’s a kind of defensive snobbery, a delusion that the world and its constituent parts—whether a product or a piece of art or a loved one—exist to please you.

Americans as a whole have become more entitled as we’ve become more deeply immersed in consumer culture, with its insidious credo: The customer is always right.

This is why I often find it disheartening to eavesdrop on people at the annual Association of Writers & Writing Programs’ conference and book fair, for instance. So many of the conversations seem to be about why this panel sucked or that writer is overrated.

I understand the temptation to talk smack. It’s daunting to be surrounded by ten thousand people who all want the same thing: the adoration of readers. Especially given the dwindling audience for poetry and literary fiction and nonfiction. People wind up feeling powerless, which leads them to seek the cheapest available form of power: the power to judge.

But entitlement is the enemy of artistic progress, which requires patience and gratitude and, above all, humility. You don’t grow as a writer by writing off other people’s efforts. You grow as a writer by respecting the process.

A big part of that process is putting in the hours. But I also believe that writers must develop a critical faculty—the capacity to judge with ruthless precision and empathy. It’s easy to say you don’t like a story or poem or novel. It’s much more difficult to point to particular scenes or paragraphs or sentences, and to articulate exactly why they feel false or hurried or confusing. And it’s hard, also, to look past your own sensibility, your biases—to assess a piece of writing on its own terms.

A good workshop should offer honest feedback—painfully honest if necessary. It does the writer, and his or her colleagues, little good if everyone just plays patty-cake. But such criticism should be preceded by a discussion of what the writer was trying to achieve, and where the writer was most successful. Not just to flatter, but because this is how a critic earns the right to criticize.

Not everyone subscribes to this method, or this view. But the more years I spend as a writer, the more esteem I feel for anyone who writes—my students, my peers, and my betters.

There’s a passage in Tobias Wolff’s famous “Bullet in the Brain” that conveys this idea a lot more eloquently than I can. The story is about a once-passionate student of literature who’s become a burned-out book critic. Wolff writes, “He did not remember the surprise of seeing a college classmate’s name on the jacket of a novel not long after they graduated, or the respect he had felt after reading the book. He did not remember the pleasure of giving respect.”

This is the Problem of Entitlement in a nutshell.

And it is the reason, as a teacher, I go out of my way to avoid criticizing other published writers in front of my students. Some years ago, a group of them asked me what I thought of a story that had run in the New Yorker, which they clearly hated. I spent an hour going over it with them, pointing out all the places where it succeeded. I did this even though, privately, I hadn’t much liked the story.

There’s a lot of talk these days about being a good literary citizen. But that doesn’t just mean tweeting sweet nothings to the world or showing up at readings. It begins with showing a basic respect for the larger struggle in which we are all engaged.

In the end, the students I taught this past spring will either get over their sense of entitlement or, at some point, abandon writing.

In my note of apology over my outburst in class, I tried to make this point less obnoxiously. “Every story has something to teach you,” I wrote. “You guys do a fantastic job in class of being generous with one another. The larger world of writers deserves the same respect. A story is important because a human being made it, not because it ran in this or that magazine or anthology.”

The next time you find yourself dismissing a piece of writing, please remember this: Entitlement ultimately corrodes your creative efforts. Generosity and humility will get you a lot further as a writer.

Steve Almond is the author of nine books of fiction and nonfiction, most recently Against Football: One Fan’s Reluctant Manifesto (Melville House, 2014). His website is stevealmondjoy.com.

 

They didn’t seem to understand—they were too entitled to understand—that the production of great literature requires a deep engagement with great literature.

The Darkness Within: In Praise of the Unlikable

by

Steve Almond

January/February 2018
12.13.17

In Print and Online

Last summer I wrote a review of Who Is Rich? (Random House, 2017) by Matthew Klam. The novel is narrated by a man named Rich Fischer, a self-loathing husband and father who conducts an anguished and antic affair with an equally unhappy infidel.

Shortly after I turned in my review, I heard the book discussed on the radio. The segment opened on an odd note. “Rich is a hard man to like,” the host began. I sat back in astonishment—the notion hadn’t even occurred to me. But a quick survey of prepublication reviews revealed that this was, in fact, the consensus view: Rich was whiny, selfish, unsympathetic.

These complaints, it should be noted, weren’t generally directed at his adultery, about which he is so racked with guilt that he attempts to kill himself twice. No, his central offense is that he articulates the miseries of monogamy and parenthood with such tender precision. He’s hard to like, in other words, because he makes the reader feel uncomfortable.

And yet when I survey the books that inspired me to quit journalism and take up fiction two decades ago, every single one features protagonists who are “hard to like” in the exact same way: Birds of America by Lorrie Moore, The Lover by Marguerite Duras, Airships by Barry Hannah, Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson, the stories of Flannery O’Connor.

My predilection for destructive and discomfiting characters arose, in part, from my years as an investigative reporter, which I spent tracking con men and corrupt cops, shady developers and sexual deviants.

In my reporting, the central danger was detection by the authorities. In literature, the danger was self-revelation. The question was why people messed up their lives and, when they got going, the lives of those around them.

This question began with the characters, but it extended to the reader. Spending time with folks who were morally flawed and ruthlessly candid, who had thrown all manner of caution to the wind, was thrilling specifically because they enacted my own repressed urges. I didn’t just want to rubberneck their misdeeds. I felt implicated by them.

As I turned all this over in my mind, I began to realize why I’d found the scolding critiques of Rich Fischer so vexing. They weren’t just sanctimonious or shallow. There was something cowardly in them, a mind-set that positioned fiction as a place we go to have our virtues affirmed rather than having the confused and wounded parts of ourselves exposed.

***

A lot of ink has been spilled over the past few years on this question of likability, as well as an adjoining anxiety: how important it is that characters be “relatable.” One of the flash points of this debate emerged from the critical reception of Claire Messud’s fierce novel The Woman Upstairs (Knopf, 2013), whose narrator, Nora Eldridge, spends much of the book railing against the forms of feminine duty she has internalized.

When an interviewer for Publishers Weekly observed that she “wouldn’t want to be friends with Nora” because of her “unbearably grim” outlook, Messud’s reply lit up the Internet. “For heaven’s sake, what kind of question is that?” she demanded. Messud went on to cite a dozen famously repellent male characters who are rarely, if ever, subjected to such a litmus test. “If you’re reading to find friends,” she concluded, “you’re in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities. The relevant question isn’t ‘Is this a potential friend for me?’ but ‘Is this character alive?’”

Messud was hailed for confronting what we might call the fallacy of likability, and the ways in which female authors are expected to cleave to this notion.

One of the most fascinating reactions came from novelist Jennifer Weiner. In an essay published by Slate she noted, rightly, that many readers come to fiction hoping to spend time with characters they admire. And she argued that the creators and consumers of such characters shouldn’t be looked down upon.

But Weiner’s defense of likability was undermined by her own resentments. Likable, she insisted, was a code word “employed by literary authors to tell their best-selling brethren that their work sucks.” Her response was to tell Messud that her work sucked.

“There’s no payoff,” Weiner wrote of The Woman Upstairs, “just a 300-page immersion in the acid bath of Nora’s misery, her jealousy, her lack of compassion, her towering sense of entitlement.” Weiner felt Messud had willfully crafted a character to whom no one can relate.

The irony was that Nora elicited such vehement reactions precisely because readers related to her too much. They felt implicated, both by her impotent rage and the despair lurking beneath her grievances. “Above all, in my anger, I was sad,” she confesses. “Isn’t that always the way, that at the heart of the fire is a frozen kernel of sorrow that the fire is trying—valiantly, fruitlessly—to eradicate.”

What I’m getting at here is that the debate about likability ultimately boils down to sensibility. Nora Eldridge’s view of the world, and her place in it, is too dark and intense for some readers. When they pick up a book, they want to be transported to a sunnier precinct, or a more exotic one, with a friendlier companion. They seek a refuge from the anguish of their inner life.

There’s no right or wrong in any of this. It’s a function of what sort of experience we’re after as writers and readers.

***

There’s another unspoken factor in all this: the market. If you’re an unpublished writer seeking representation, and you submit a manuscript with an abrasive protagonist, chances are you’re going to hear from agents concerned about likability. The whole reason Lolita was originally published in France, and nearly three years later in the United States, is that Humbert Humbert’s panting hebephilia was abhorrent to American editors.

Cultural and literary standards evolve, of course. But financial anxieties are forever. Which is why agents and editors remain wary of characters they fear readers will find off-putting. In a world where reading books is itself a marginal activity, one performed in defiance of the perpetual racket of digital distraction, why risk losing sales?

I spent weeks, for instance, arguing with my editor about the section of my memoir, Candyfreak (Algonquin Books, 2004), in which I developed the irrational conviction that I had testicular cancer during a barnstorming tour of U.S. candy bar factories. My editor argued, quite sensibly, that this disclosure made me a lot less likable as a guide. What’s more, it dampened the giddy mood that prevailed elsewhere and guaranteed the book would never be adopted in school curriculums.

The reason I insisted on its inclusion was that I saw my self-diagnosis as an integral part of the story, a symptom of the depression that had reignited my childhood obsession with candy.

I don’t mean to imply that highlighting the repellent traits of a character is some shortcut to literary depth. That’s as foolish as the notion that scenes of graphic violence or sex will magically yield drama.

Some years ago I began a novel about a shameless right-wing demagogue who decides to run for president (I know). The response I got from readers was that my leading man, while fun to hang out with for a little while, was ultimately oppressive. It wasn’t that my leading man had the manners and conscience of a shark but that he had no subtext, no dreams or fears animating his outsize appetites. Nor did he hew to the path of so many unlikable protagonists, the Emma Woodhouses and Ebenezer Scrooges, who are forced to confront their flaws and wind up redeemed in the bargain. My man was self-regarding without being self-aware.

Such a figure might plausibly thrive in the world of politics (again, I know). On the page, he quickly degenerated into caricature. 

***

But what about those characters who refuse to evolve or offer up much in the way of vulnerability? I am thinking here of our most famous villains: Milton’s Satan, Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, Joseph Conrad’s Kurtz, Flannery O’Connor’s Misfit, Cormac McCarthy’s Judge Holden. These figures, though not technically protagonists, dominate their given worlds.

They do so because they’re willing to violate moral norms and thus wind up driving the action of the story. They’re also fearless in apprehending the nature of the world around them, even if they deny us access to their own inner lives. Most vitally, they embrace the transgressive aspects of their selfhood, the ones we anxiously inhibit so as to appear more likable.

Consider Melville’s Captain Ahab as he stands upon the deck of the Pequod, roaring out the true nature of his mission. “If man will strike, strike through the mask. How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me,” he tells his crew. “I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and…I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.”

Tell us how you really feel, Ahab.

The reason readers like me gravitate toward characters like Ahab is that, not very deep down, we know ourselves to be equally charged with wrath, besieged by private doubts and grudges, and thus enthralled by those who dare to speak truth in a world overrun by personal forms of marketing.

The rise of Internet culture has only magnified the allure of such figures. Most social media platforms revolve around an elaborate effort to generate “likes” by presenting an airbrushed version of our lives and values. What grants trolls their magnetic power—whether they lurk online or in the White House—is the unacknowledged force of our own suppression.

Moral perfection is admirable, after all, but deadly dull in a literary character. I think here about the figure of Jesus Christ as we encounter him in the New Testament. He says and does all the right things. But he only comes alive as a character in those rarely cited verses when his revolutionary ire and human needs come into view.

The most shocking moment in the Gospels takes place a few days before his appointed end. On the way to Jerusalem, he stops in Bethany, where a woman lovingly anoints his head with perfumed oil.

The act angers some of those who witness it, including Judas Iscariot, who asks Jesus whether the expensive oil could have been put to better use if it was sold and the money given to the poor. “The poor you will always have,” Jesus replies. “But you will not always have me.”

It’s a moment of sensual indulgence and unvarnished pride that’s astonishingly out of character for Jesus. By my reckoning, he’s never more likable. 

***

I don’t expect this piece will do much to settle the question of likability. It’s one of those disputes into which writers will continue to pour their opinions and anxieties.

And that’s probably a good thing, if you think about it. Because we happen to be living in a historical moment ruled by unlikable characters. Take a look at our political and popular culture, at the angry voices emanating from our screens, at the seething violence in our discourse.

As writers, it can feel pointless to engage in literary endeavors when the world around us feels so combustible, so fragile. But I would argue that it has never been more important for writers to engage with the questions literature seeks to answer.

If we are to reclaim our country from the dark forces determined to divide us, to sow discord and cynicism among us, we must first seek to understand the darkness within ourselves. That means turning to stories in which we encounter characters actively engaged in the struggle—and sometimes failing—to contain their unbearable thoughts and feelings.

The urgent question isn’t whether we like these folks. It’s whether, in coming to know them, we come to know ourselves any better.

 

Steve Almond’s book Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country is forthcoming in April from Red Hen Press.

His central offense is that he articulates the miseries of monogamy and parenthood with such tender precision. He’s hard to like, in other words, because he makes the reader feel uncomfortable.
Polite Need Not Apply: A Q&A With Mary Gaitskill

The Problem of Entitlement: A Question of Respect

by

Steve Almond

September/October 2014
8.20.14

In Print and Online

This past spring I took a position as a visiting writer at a well-respected MFA program. My students were by and large intelligent and serious, but there were a few moments when I found them—what’s the word I’m looking for here—exasperating.

One day before the fiction workshop, for instance, we got into a discussion about the Best American Short Stories series, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. To my astonishment, a number of students made comments indicating their disdain for the annual anthology.

“Wait a second,” I said. “The stories in those collections are always great.”

There was an awkward pause. Then one of them said, “You’re being ironic, right?”

At this point, I sort of lost it. I told my students that they had every right to dislike particular stories, but that dismissing them entirely was foolish. Then I added something along the lines of, “Why don’t you guys publish a story in Best American and then you can sit in judgment of them.”

It was not my finest moment as a teacher. (And, for the record, I later apologized to the entire class.) It was an impulsive reaction to what I’ve come to think of over the years as the Problem of Entitlement.

I mean by this that a significant number of the students I’ve encountered in creative writing programs display a curious arrogance toward published authors, as well as an inflated sense of their own talents and importance. The same attitudes often prevail in those online precincts where new and emerging writers congregate.

In my own experience, the Problem of Entitlement has gotten worse over the past decade and a half, and for three distinct reasons: first, the growing competitive pressures on aspiring writers; second, the pace and ease of judgment fostered by digital technology; and finally, the insidious cultural tendency of students to think of themselves as customers.

Here’s what I suspect was going on in that fiction workshop: My students were actually in a kind of quiet panic. Most of them had made significant sacrifices to attend graduate school. They were taking a big risk, both financially and psychologically. And they were smart enough to recognize, on some level, that the odds against their ever placing a story in the Best American anthology were pretty steep.

Rather than face the reality of their challenge—that they were going to have to spend thousands of doubt-choked hours working to improve and absorb tons of rejection and live in a state of economic and creative insecurity—they defaulted to a more convenient reality: that such anthologies are full of hacks whose success (as one student was later kind enough to explain to me) boils down to nepotism.

In other words, because they felt overmatched, they assumed a posture of superiority.

This defense mechanism is hardly unique to writers. Every graduate program in this country is, to some extent, a fishbowl filled with ambitious students who have no clue how big and cold the ocean really is.

But the harsh truth looming over students of writing, as compared with those studying law or medicine or engineering, is that only a fraction will find success in their chosen field—that is, will go on to publish books—and most of these will have to discover other means of supporting themselves and their families. Just graduating from a writing program doesn’t make you an author, let alone a celebrated one. It’s only the beginning of the process.

I myself was a schmuck in grad school: insecure, needy, and provocative in ways that only years of therapy would reveal. I did not like myself very much, and you wouldn’t have either.

But one thing I didn’t do in grad school was take the experience for granted. I was nearly thirty when I arrived, having worked as a newspaper reporter for seven years. I knew the world wasn’t clamoring to read my drab little short stories, and that it was going to be a long time before I got good enough to have a book of them published. (In fact, it would take eight years.)

Toward the end of my first year, our professor asked us to read a long piece in Harper’s magazine called “Perchance to Dream.” It was a fifteen-thousand-word lament by an obscure novelist named Jonathan Franzen about the peril of writing novels in an age dominated by visual media. As a literary tadpole, I found the message terrifying. But Franzen clearly had a point to make, and while he seemed somewhat irritable as a person, his prose was lucid and thoughtful.

It was shocking to me, therefore, that our professor—himself a young novelist—spent a good portion of class tearing into the rhetorical excesses of the piece, with the enthusiastic help of other students.

At a certain point I said, rather foolishly, “I don’t get the point of this discussion. It sounds like we’re just tearing down the writer.”

My point wasn’t to defend Franzen, who certainly didn’t need my help. I was troubled by the antagonism that our professor was not only permitting but instigating. Wasn’t the goal of grad school to pick apart your own writing, rather than that of published writers?

The Franzen piece is particularly haunting to revisit today because Franzen was writing in 1996, an era when Google was still just a big number and the radical new technology was e-mail, which we checked at the library.

The world of grad students two decades later is a lot different. Nearly all the students have smartphones, which they bring to class. Nearly all of them spend more time staring at screens than at books.

And the students I encounter seem to value reading less and less. I remember one especially galling workshop that I taught a few years ago, in which I asked the participants to read a single story, “Guests of the Nation” by Frank O’Connor. Hardly any of them bothered. They didn’t seem to understand—they were too entitled to understand—that the production of great literature requires a deep engagement with great literature. In fact, they were more likely to talk about a movie or TV show, or what they just posted on Facebook, than the last great book they read.

The Internet is what you make of it, obviously. And there are aspiring writers who use digital technology to read and research and seek the counsel of their peers. But the Internet has also been a great aggregator of anxiety and an enabler of our worst tendencies. It has allowed us to trumpet our own opinions, to win attention by broadcasting our laziest and cruelest judgments, to grind axes in public. It has made us feel, in some perverse sense, that we are entitled to do so.

This, I suspect, is why so many of the discussions of the assigned reading in the nonfiction class I taught this past spring began with students talking about why they didn’t like the author. This one was sexist. That one was self-involved. And so on.

While I appreciated the critical acumen of my students—they often made excellent points—there was an air of entitlement to these judgments. They seemed reluctant to examine the aspects of craft and storytelling at which these authors excelled, and that they might therefore learn from them.

One day, Elizabeth Gilbert’s name came up and, well, you can pretty much guess what happened next: Students began slagging her for receiving an advance to write her memoir Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia and for writing “from privilege,” a favorite complaint. I asked the student who was carping the loudest if she had read that book—or indeed, any of Gilbert’s other five books. She had not.

It might sound like I’m describing “snark” here. But while the Problem of Entitlement and the Problem of Snark are related, they’re not the same.

Snark is a conscious attempt to cast aspersion for narcissistic reward. Writers who use social media, or other public forums, to dis other writers are seeking to convert resentment into attention. It’s a tool of self-promotion.

Entitlement operates at a more basic and often unconscious level. It’s a kind of defensive snobbery, a delusion that the world and its constituent parts—whether a product or a piece of art or a loved one—exist to please you.

Americans as a whole have become more entitled as we’ve become more deeply immersed in consumer culture, with its insidious credo: The customer is always right.

This is why I often find it disheartening to eavesdrop on people at the annual Association of Writers & Writing Programs’ conference and book fair, for instance. So many of the conversations seem to be about why this panel sucked or that writer is overrated.

I understand the temptation to talk smack. It’s daunting to be surrounded by ten thousand people who all want the same thing: the adoration of readers. Especially given the dwindling audience for poetry and literary fiction and nonfiction. People wind up feeling powerless, which leads them to seek the cheapest available form of power: the power to judge.

But entitlement is the enemy of artistic progress, which requires patience and gratitude and, above all, humility. You don’t grow as a writer by writing off other people’s efforts. You grow as a writer by respecting the process.

A big part of that process is putting in the hours. But I also believe that writers must develop a critical faculty—the capacity to judge with ruthless precision and empathy. It’s easy to say you don’t like a story or poem or novel. It’s much more difficult to point to particular scenes or paragraphs or sentences, and to articulate exactly why they feel false or hurried or confusing. And it’s hard, also, to look past your own sensibility, your biases—to assess a piece of writing on its own terms.

A good workshop should offer honest feedback—painfully honest if necessary. It does the writer, and his or her colleagues, little good if everyone just plays patty-cake. But such criticism should be preceded by a discussion of what the writer was trying to achieve, and where the writer was most successful. Not just to flatter, but because this is how a critic earns the right to criticize.

Not everyone subscribes to this method, or this view. But the more years I spend as a writer, the more esteem I feel for anyone who writes—my students, my peers, and my betters.

There’s a passage in Tobias Wolff’s famous “Bullet in the Brain” that conveys this idea a lot more eloquently than I can. The story is about a once-passionate student of literature who’s become a burned-out book critic. Wolff writes, “He did not remember the surprise of seeing a college classmate’s name on the jacket of a novel not long after they graduated, or the respect he had felt after reading the book. He did not remember the pleasure of giving respect.”

This is the Problem of Entitlement in a nutshell.

And it is the reason, as a teacher, I go out of my way to avoid criticizing other published writers in front of my students. Some years ago, a group of them asked me what I thought of a story that had run in the New Yorker, which they clearly hated. I spent an hour going over it with them, pointing out all the places where it succeeded. I did this even though, privately, I hadn’t much liked the story.

There’s a lot of talk these days about being a good literary citizen. But that doesn’t just mean tweeting sweet nothings to the world or showing up at readings. It begins with showing a basic respect for the larger struggle in which we are all engaged.

In the end, the students I taught this past spring will either get over their sense of entitlement or, at some point, abandon writing.

In my note of apology over my outburst in class, I tried to make this point less obnoxiously. “Every story has something to teach you,” I wrote. “You guys do a fantastic job in class of being generous with one another. The larger world of writers deserves the same respect. A story is important because a human being made it, not because it ran in this or that magazine or anthology.”

The next time you find yourself dismissing a piece of writing, please remember this: Entitlement ultimately corrodes your creative efforts. Generosity and humility will get you a lot further as a writer.

Steve Almond is the author of nine books of fiction and nonfiction, most recently Against Football: One Fan’s Reluctant Manifesto (Melville House, 2014). His website is stevealmondjoy.com.

 

They didn’t seem to understand—they were too entitled to understand—that the production of great literature requires a deep engagement with great literature.

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 1: Postcard From Boston

by

Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott

5.9.06

Online Only

Rule No. 1 of the Which Brings Me to You book tour is this: Don’t piss Julianna Baggott off. Why? Because Julianna is small and fierce and has pointy red cowboy boots, the tips of which I do not want to have to taste.

How long did it take me to piss her off?

Exactly four minutes and thirty-seven seconds.

Here’s what happened: We climbed onstage at the Attic Bar, our debut gig, and Julianna stepped to the mic—looking, if I may say so, rather striking in some black material, the name of which I do not (and will never) know—and began to read from the book.

So far, so good.

I was seated a few feet behind her, to her left, in an area best described as her periphery. As is my habit at readings, I decided to follow along with my own reading copy, which meant that when she moved from one passage to the next I was forced to do a certain amount of, well, flipping.

I didn’t think of this as particularly distracting, because I assumed that she would see that I was, in my own dorky way, paying extra special careful attention to her reading. But of course she had no way of knowing what I was doing. To her it just looked like I was browsing through the book—perhaps underlining the dirty passages for a second time—while she was reading.

And so, at a certain point, she broke off her reading and turned to me and said, in a tone of bemused (and amplified) wrath, “What the hell are you doing over there, Almond? Are you browsing the book while I’m reading?”

The crowd fell silent.

I looked at my coauthor helplessly.

Julianna raised her red cowboy boot in a gesture clearly intended to signify potential harm to my person.

“Sorry,” I whispered. “I was just reading along.”

I then tried—yes, foolishly—to show her that I was on the same page as she was.

“What are you doing now?” Julianna said. “Are you showing me that you can read, Almond? I know that you can read. I think everyone in this room knows that you can read.”

So, as noted, Rule No. 1 remains: Don’t piss the Baggott off.

A close second in the rules department would be: Don’t get really, really drunk before your debut reading.

Once again, I must insist that my getting really, really drunk was for the most part inadvertent. It had been a rough day and I hadn’t eaten lunch.

Also, because I was one of the readers, everyone—including Julianna’s own brother Bill—was offering to buy me drinks.

Also also, in the passage I was reading, the character was really drunk, so in this sense I was able to convince myself that guzzling the last of my three drinks right before I lurched up to the microphone was merely my way of getting “into character.” Method reading, it’s called.

Does this explain why, in the space of forty minutes, I consumed nine ounces of bourbon? No, officer, it does not.

But this alcoholic intake does help explain a few a things, such as why I did a lot of hiccupping during my reading, and why I sought protection by ducking behind Julianna when, during the Q&A phase of our performance, an overzealous Candyfreak fan began pelting me with fine Belgian chocolates. It should also serve as a partial explanation for why I scrawled the following inscription on one young woman’s book:

“Trust me on this: You look good enough to lick.”

It also helps explain why I woke up this morning with a migrainous version of La Cucaracha tappy-tap-tapping on my frontal lobes and a giant cigarette filter where my tongue used to be.

But listen, I’m not complaining.

A cup of coffee, a few Percocet, and I’m good to go.

Honestly, Julianna and I are having a nice time so far! We’re in that giddy honeymoon stage where we still have things to talk about, where the bad reviews are still just a distant cloudbank, where she has not yet, officially, assaulted me.

More soon.

Love & aspirin,
Steve

•••

I will confess that I had some high-octane pre-tour anxiety. While packing my suitcase it dawned on me that Steve will have groupies, no doubt. People will sway with lighters. They’ll chant his name and shout out his story titles. I’ll sing (off-key) back-up and then, when no one’s noticing—and who will notice?—I’ll slip offstage and be done with it.

“Now, now,” I told myself on the flight to Boston, “I’m exaggerating. Bookstores don’t even have stages.” I reminded myself that I start every tour pessimistically.

A. There was a stage, which immediately struck me as a bad sign. The reading wasn’t in a bookstore after all. It was in a bar. This was good news for my brother, who not only showed up but further redeemed himself by bringing a posse.

B. There were no lighters. No swaying. Thank God. But people do still, occasionally, throw candy at Steve when he reads. Evidently there was a horrific incident where Steve was on a panel and some overzealous literary fan had bad aim (literary fans aren’t known for their eye-hand coordination) and an errant candy pegged Elizabeth Graver in the collar bone—a story I’d dismissed as literary hype, but now I believe. The candy was hard and, frankly, thrown with a little too much passion. Or maybe Almond fans can be a little vicious. Worth further monitoring.

C. I still ate the candy though. It was chocolate and individually wrapped—which would make my mother happy. She may have raised a daughter who’s a traveling salesman (of smutty literature) but not one who will eat chocolates that aren’t individually wrapped.

D. And the reading? Well, in retrospect, Steve and I may have started the viciousness—modeling it for the crowd. It’s a kindly viciousness though. There’s still plenty of politesse, a laminant that’s bound to dull and eventually crack—you know, like pancake-house placemats.

And E. We were both a little drunk. This is what happens when you have readings in bars and a good brother buying rounds.

Hungoverly yours,
Julianna

 

This is the first installment in a series of Postcards written by Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott, coauthors of Which Brings Me to You (Algonquin Books, 2006), while on tour to promote their book.

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 2: Postcard From New York City

by

Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott

5.11.06

Online Only

Ah, springtime in New York City! That ineluctable smell! What is it, exactly? Curry and fish sauce, garbage, perfume, rotten eggs, fresh bread, urine, incense, stale tailpipe, shish kebab, body odor. (I am estimating.)

We arrived in one piece, Julianna and I, and immediately set about showing just what hicks we are. This involved a brief period of disorientation in Penn Station, followed by a brief period of disorientation on the corner of 28th and Lexington, followed by me asking a guy coming out of a McDonald’s for directions.

A quick tip for the savvy traveler: Don’t ask the guy coming out of McDonald’s for directions. He is from Oklahoma.

I’m going to skip over the part where I get briefly disoriented on my way to the reading, because the reading itself rocked so very hard. Julianna had brought a posse, including a woman in the front row with a baby who appeared to have been born some hours earlier. The baby was very well-behaved. I was slightly less so.

Two other quick notes:

Note one: Julianna and I continue to do a lot of arguing during readings. Oddly, the crowd seems to enjoy this. I can’t figure out if they think we’re just “pretending” to argue for show, or if they’ve realized that we are, in fact, arguing.

Note two: I was not drunk.

After the reading, we signed a bunch of books. Two incidents bear mentioning. First, Kyle Weaver made the trip from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with his pal Ken. I have no idea how far Harrisburg is from New York City, but I can tell you that Kyle is on my list of New Favorite New People.

And not just because of my abject, insatiable desire for Pennsylvanian groupies, but because Kyle is an editor at Stackpole Books, an independent press and the publisher of what ranks as the single greatest book in the history of culinary literature.

I speak (of course) of Country Scrapple, the definitive guide to the pork product that has been setting tongues aflame for more than sixty years. I don’t know that I can convey how deep my worship of Country Scrapple runs without oinking. I have memorized entire chunks of the book, along with a mental image of the cover, which features a shiny, presumably soon-to-be-scrappled snout.

“You have no idea how hard I fought for that cover,” Kyle told me.

“You have no idea how much that means to me,” I said, not joking.

A friend of my aunt Alice, Julie Gancher, also showed up with her husband and daughter. Julie is one of those people who has known me since I was a baby, which gives her a quasi-familial right to harass me about whatever she so chooses.

Sample dialogue:

Me: Can I sign your book, Julie?

Julie: That’s why we waited in line.

Me: Okay. (Signs book).

Julie: (Examining my signature) That’s your signature? What are you, a doctor?

Julie’s Daughter: (Slightly mortified) Mom, you can’t say that to him. He has to sign a lot of books.

Julie: I’m just asking. He’s a writer and this is how he signs his name? If he was a doctor, that would be one thing…

After the reading, Julianna’s friends led a forced march down to a bar in the East Village that one of them part-owns, and that was so far away that I eventually peeled off with a few pals and ducked into Katz’s Deli for a big bowl of matzo soup and a turkey sandwich the approximate width of Kansas.

I was joined in my porkfest by the kickass novelist Laurie Foos—pregnant and looking ravishing—and her hilarious husband Mike, whom, for some reason, I believed to be a fireman and introduced to a bunch of my friends as a fireman, because I find the idea that he is an actual fireman mysteriously thrilling.

He is, in fact, a corporate lawyer.

Four thousand calories later, we joined Julianna and her posse at the bar. Julianna began calling out to Laurie, “We’re gonna dance! Let’s dance!” an invitation that did not extend to me. Two Caucasian coauthors co-dancing? Maybe not so much.

This morning we made our way to JFK for a nine A.M. departure aboard—I am not making this up—American Airlines Flight No. 1. The cab ride included one noteworthy moment. Despite my effort to get Julianna to pay for every single expense while we’re on tour together (in keeping with the theory that she will actually not lose her receipts for reimbursement), I volunteered to pay the cab driver. As I was pulling a series of small, crumpled bills out of my wallet Julianna leaned close to me and murmured, “Remember to tip.”

I can hardly blame her; I did spend the ten minutes before we got into the taxi loading my computer bag with several dozen muffins from the hotel’s free buffet. Fear not, I tipped the driver, though not the somber gentleman manning the buffet.

There are limits even to my generosity.

Looking to lay down my base tan in LA,
Steve

•••

New York is filled with New Yorkers—you can usually count on that—but when Steve asks for directions he never seems to find one. The people he stops on the street don’t look like tourists. No cameras and flapping maps. No. But they answer in southern drawls and Canadian yips. I fear they are fake New Yorkers. Decoys of some sort, meant to further disorient prey. (We would be the prey.)

After falling for a few of these knock-offs, while still at a very early sign of disorientation—maybe having wandered fourteen steps from the spot the cabby dropped us off—Steve calls the hotel and asks for directions. I have lived under the assumption that asking for directions was strictly feminine behavior and so this seems, well, distinctly unmasculine. But there’s a gender reversal at work. I have to admit to myself that I would have wandered for blocks in the stuffy heat, my little suitcase on wheels tottering behind me. Anywhere else in the world, I’d have quickly asked directions. But I wouldn’t give New Yorkers the satisfaction—New Yorkers with their intimidating bustle and strut. I lived in New York for part of a summer in the ’80s when it was dirtier and meaner. And my older sister would tell me, “Never look up at the buildings or someone will know you’re from out of town and rob you—or worse.” I still keep my head down in New York, which does nothing for my feeble sense of direction. Not to worry though. No full-tilt wandering necessary. Steve has humbled himself—as I see it at least. When he gives the person at the desk our coordinants, it turns out we’re only a cross street away.

This getting to the hotel is a little milestone for us. I don’t know if Steve sees it as such. But I do. We have other places to go, of course, but this alone…well, we’re beaming at the front desk—a little shiny with sweat. There’s a bowl of Hershey minis sitting there in anticipation of our arrival. Steve palms a few.

We make our way to another duo gig and then part company. I spend the afternoon with my best friend from childhood and her newborn—who is compelling advertising for me to have another—though he isn’t doing this on purpose. You can’t blame him, really. I know it’s dangerous, but I hold him and he smells sweet and milky and all baby-fied.

This is when the missing takes hold—my husband, Dave, and our three kids. Last time I toured New York, we were all together, plus my parents and my grandmother who was 86 at the time. I have a distinct memory of walking down the Avenue of the Americas, holding hands with my older two, Dave and the youngest just behind us, and I was crying. The book I was on tour with, The Madam, was about the women who came before me, our family’s history in prostitution, survival. That tour was tough in its own way. Each book, that handing-over to the public, has its own brand of heartache for me. I miss my kids. I miss Dave. I have a feeling now that the missing has just surfaced, and it probably won’t ease up.

The reading is at a Barnes & Noble—upstairs, amid books, where readings tend to be. But I’m dismayed. I miss the bar from the night before. When books line walls, people tend to go library quiet. It’s stifling. This book is best suited to be read in bars. Steve and I read different parts than the previous night. We banter, maybe even spar? At one point he told the crowd that both of his parents are psychoanalysts, and I leaned into the mic and said, “Big fucking surprise there!”

To sidestep some sex question—these are inevitable—I find myself telling the crowd about a dream I had a few weeks ago. It goes: I’m in my hotel room and I’m told that I’m to race Steve in the lobby—a sprint. I get fully dressed in sports gear. I was always a fast runner, so I’m feeling pretty cocky—dream cocky. I’m warming up, taking it all quite seriously, when Steve walks up in a seventies-style, wide-collared shirt and says, “Smell me. It’s the new Drakkar Noir.” And, in the dream, I realize that this isn’t a race like I thought it was going to be. I’ve got it all wrong and I’m bound to lose.

The point was, I think, to say that Steve and I don’t have a sexy relationship. It’s a competitive one—though I guess competition can be sexy. But the competition I once felt doesn’t seem right now that we’re on the road—finding our way through train stations, on subway lines, through a maze of fake New Yorkers. It feels more like being on a team, which I think was how it felt way back (way, way back) when this whole novel started. Two crazy kids. An experiment. A lark. A game. It was, once upon a time, sporting.

Still and all—full sprint.

Julianna

P.S. Steve doesn’t smell like Drakkar Noir, and he’s yet to break out a wide collared shirt—but the tour is still young.

 


This is the second installment in a series of Postcards written by Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott, coauthors of Which Brings Me to You (Algonquin Books, 2006), while on tour to promote their book.

 

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 1: Postcard From Boston

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 3: Postcard From Los Angeles

by

Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott

5.15.06

Online Only

I’m going to dispense with a report on the weather, because I am writing to you from Los Angeles, where the temp is perma-locked at eighty-three degrees Fahrenheit. The famous smog is still here, the toxic velvet dusk, the gleaming impermanence of movie billboards. And—let us now thank the gods of good fortune—my new wife Erin!

Erin is finishing up her MFA at UC Irvine, and so volunteered to act as a designated chauffeur-concubine for the tour. (Just to keep the accounting clear: Erin is being paid by Algonquin for any mileage accrued. I will be paying out-of-pocket for any further services.)

It was an absolute delight to see her shining face, and she aided immeasurably in the not-constantly-getting lost process. She is also unafraid of driving in Los Angeles, which makes her braver than me by a factor of three.

The ruling authorities at Algonquin put us up at a hotel called The Grafton, on Sunset Boulevard, where the staff wear lime-green and black suits and practice that pouncing brand of politesse that I often mistake for daylight robbery. What the hell are you doing with my bag? Hey! Those car keys are mine!

The Grafton serves a fantastic lunch. I mention this because both Erin and I are big eaters, even more so now that Erin is twenty weeks pregnant and plumping up just splendidly. So our lives pretty much revolve around our next meal, or our next snack, or our next pre-snack nibble, which is to be differentiated from a “bite” (not quite a full nibble, but slightly more than a “taste”).

Erin ordered a grilled chicken sandwich with herb mayo and spiced chutney, a sandwich that made me want to swan dive with joy from our balcony table into the pool below. My burger was fabulous, well worth the requisite liberal carnivore guilt. The fries were my absolute favorite kind—crispy shoestrings—so Erin and I did a lot of bite-trading and exclaiming and frantic ketchup-dunking and gesturing with our hands.

Julianna watched this massacre with a kind of morbid fascination. After getting clearance, we finished off her fries and the rest of her salad. (Note: I had designs on the remains of her turkey club before the waitress swooped in and cleared her plate.)

The evening’s reading was at Skylight Books, my favorite indie bookstore on planet earth, and I’m not just saying that because there’s a tree growing in the middle of the shop or because the staffers are all these cool-ass zine dudes and dudettes or because they have a cat with no tail that roams the place. I am saying that because they have sold more copies of my story collection My Life in Heavy Metal than the entire Borders chain.

Call me crazy, but these are my kind of people.

The reading featured a great many dirty scenes, as read by me, and a great many poetic passages, as read by Julianna, and a great many bizarro questions, as asked by the audience.

Audience: “Did things ever get physical between you two?”

Steve: “You mean fighting, right?”

Audience: “Right.”

Steve: “No comment.”

After the reading, we proceeded to an Indian restaurant, where we sat on pillows in the banquet room and did more extreme overeating.

The next night we did a cool event organized by my pal Christine Berry at smartgals.org and held at a club called Fais Do-Do. We were the featured readers, but the real highlight was the gaggle of Los Angeles bands that played before and after us. I got to see my pal, the fabulous writer Rob Roberge, with his band The Danbury Shakes. (His wife, Gayle, played bass.) Rob isn’t some dilettante. He sings and handles his ax like a genuine rock star, albeit one who is still, at heart, a lit-nerd. A songwriter named Holly Ramos blew me away, as did The Evangenitals, who sound sort of like a cross between Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks and L’il Kim. I bought their album.

The highlight of the night was the set by The Santiago Steps. Not just because they rocked (though they did), but because, about halfway through their set Julianna got up and began dancing.

And this wasn’t some half-embarrassed swaying-in-the-shadows business. No, this was a flagrant full-body noodle-bop, conducted smack in the middle of the dance floor that was—and I want to emphasize this—totally empty except for her.

I cannot express how deeply I admire Julianna for having the cajones to do this, especially given that I do not dance in public. (Let me be more specific: My wife has forbidden me to dance in public.)

You are no doubt wondering how Julianna ranks as a dancer.

Let me just say, based on this very limited sample, that she falls somewhere between myself and Martha Graham.

And actually, before I say anything else that might get me in trouble, I am going to sign off, so I can enjoy a midnight snack of cold Indian leftovers.

Ah, the glory of the book tour!

Dialing in for the wake up call,
Steve

•••

The reading on the first night isn’t our zing dog-and-pony show. Almond still reads the smuttiest parts, his trademark, but he’s gone soft. He’s nearly—how shall I put it—respectful. He does not, for example, translate an audience member’s question into, “What you want to know is if we’ve fucked, right?”

This, I figure, has much to do with the fact that Almond is a newlywed and his wife, Erin, is pregnant and, glowingly beautiful, sitting in the front row. I didn’t know he had it in him—you know, an off-switch. For all of his shock factor, this has been the thing that’s shocked me the most.

What’s really interesting is that he doesn’t seem to know he’s turned anything off. Later, in the pillow room of an Indian restaurant (where we sit on pillows instead of chairs, hence the name), I mention our lack of rapport, but he’s genuinely baffled. He doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

How can there be a dog-and-pony show with two ponies and no dog? That would be a pony-pony show, and nobody goes to see a pony-pony show. When I explained this to my sister who’s a director-producer type, she asks, “What’s the entertainment value?” I don’t know what entertainment value is, but I answer, “Our schtick is love-hate.”

“Well, if he’s not comfortable with the love part in front of his wife, play up the hate,” she says.

This is genius, of course. I can easily play up the hate.

Luckily, by three in the afternoon I find myself at the Saddle Ranch Chop Shop. It’s LA authentic, meaning the wait staff is grungy but gorgeous and touchy—and by touchy I don’t mean irritable. I mean they actually touch you a lot. The wide planked floors look pricey, and they’re playing “Eye of the Tiger” without irony. The crème de la crème is the mechanical bull. I watch a guy get bucked into the air. He lands kind of crumpled in half. I imagine Almond mid-air and it brings back all of my old hate left over from the bitter end of our book. Why not challenge Almond to a mechanical bull-off?

I try this material out at Fais Do-do the next night—challenge and all. It doesn’t fly. In response to “play up the hate,” Almond says that he can certainly oblige. At the challenge of the mechanical bull-off, he says, “You want to ride the bull?” There’s a sound check. The end.

Or not exactly. We’re filler between sets for five bands—the most high-profile of which is The Evangenitals. I drink gin and tonic and dance even though this is clearly a listening crowd. The dancing doesn’t catch on. I apologize for the length of the evening to my sister, my cousin, my grad-school friend. I apologize to the crowd for not being an Evangenital. I tell the host we’re going out to smoke. None of us smoke. We just want to be able to hear each other. The evening goes on and on.

The next morning I wake up with a new thought. Before the tour, I signed on to the notion that the closer Steve and I mimicked the rapport of our two main characters, the better. But I was always deeply ambivalent about this setup. (One day I’ll write with distance and clarity about writing this sexy novel with someone other than my husband of thirteen years, and how there are somewhat dark social ramifications for me—even though my husband is the greatest champion of this book.)

Maybe I prefer the New Steve. Though I wish I’d seen New Steve coming, I think I will really feel much more comfortable without the love-hate entertainment value. I’ll get up and read. Steve will get up and read. We’ll answer some questions and sit down.

Plus, New Steve actually shaves, albeit ornamentally. He’s left behind this chin stuff that looks like it could turn into a handle, which, you never know, might come in handy—especially if Old Steve shows up again.

Julianna

 

This is the third installment in a series of Postcards written by Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott, coauthors of Which Brings Me to You (Algonquin Books, 2006), while on tour to promote their book.

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 1: Postcard From Boston
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 2: Postcard From New York City

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 4: Postcard From San Francisco

by

Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott

5.17.06

Online Only

As I stepped off the plane at the San Francisco International Airport, a strange, terrifying thought gripped me: Julianna will be meeting my mother tonight. It would be a momentous event. The two women most capable of humiliating me in public would be in the same room—and no doubt interacting during the question-and-answer session.

I could tell from that little extra pep in Julianna’s step that she was looking forward to it.

“You’re not going to embarrass me tonight, right?” I asked her as we lugged our bags toward the taxi stand.

“I wasn’t aware you were capable of embarrassment,” Julianna murmured. She was grinning in a way I would not characterize as benign. “If you’re referring to meeting your parents, I’m very much looking forward to that,” she said primly. “Yes. The Almond parents. Very interesting.”

Yes, very interesting.

Another interesting potential disaster: I was scheduled to do two readings in San Francisco, the first, with Julianna, at Cody’s bookstore, the second for a progressive group called LitPac.

The reading at Cody’s was at 6 PM and, according to my itinerary, the LitPac reading was at 10 PM. No problem. I figured I’d even have time for a leisurely dinner with my folks and Julianna, at which my mom and Julianna could share a few thousand laughs over my personal hygiene.

So I called Stephen Elliot, the writer who organized the LitPac event, to get directions.

“When do I actually need to be there?” I asked.

“The readings start at 7 PM,” he said cheerfully.

“W-w-w-what?” I said. “But my itinerary says 10 PM.”

“Hmmmm,” Elliot said. “That must be my e-mail program. When I send stuff to the east coast, it automatically adjusts to the time zone.”

There is no need to quote the ensuing exchange. The crucial thing is that Elliot assured me (in that relaxed manner Californians have) that I could show up as late as 8 PM, as there were other readers. So din-din was out.

On the taxi ride into the city, I explained the situation to Julianna, and this segued into a broader discussion about book tours.

My take on the subject: It’s an honor to be sent on a book tour (particularly by Algonquin, a company that takes good care of its authors) and you shouldn’t bitch. Not only that, you should be grateful, because the book tour allows you to promote your work more broadly and the book in question, which hopefully results in royalties down the road. I pointed out that bands are often expected to pay their own way on tour.

Julianna’s attitude ran more like this: I was paid to write the book. You are now asking me to take another week out of my schedule to promote the book, an exhausting week during which I will not get any real work done, because I will be busy lugging bags through airports and conducting idiotic arguments with my thick-skulled coauthor.

Well. I imagine having three kids and a full-time university gig (as Julianna does) might change my perspective.

Did I mention the Hotel Monaco?

It was quite possibly the nicest hotel ever to welcome me. It was certainly the only one to offer fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies at the front desk, of which I ate three, then proceeded to my room and spent fifteen minutes staring worshipfully at the toiletry items.

And the bed! The bed was so lavish, so broad, so perfect, that I didn’t even want to lie down. It seemed wrong for someone as fundamentally poor and dirty as myself to soil such a bed. So I took a bath and power-napped for ten minutes, then Julianna and I cabbed over to the Haight, where we did not in fact purchase any hash, instead opting to sign books at the local indie, The Booksmith.

Then it was back downtown for a rendezvous with my parents, those irresistible psychoanalysts Don Ricci and Babs Almond. They showed up five minutes before the reading started, fresh from their analytic chairs and beaming. I made the introductions, and they told Julianna how much they admired her writing and did not (as I might have suggested to them, during a less-balanced moment a few months back) recommend that she seek long-term therapy.

This is what I love about my parents: They are a class act.

Unfortunately, they were also exactly two-fifths of the audience, the other three members of the “crowd” being college pals.

Now any touring writer will tell you that a crowd of five is about the worst you can do. Because, really, with just three or four people you can sort of appeal to their common sense and go out for beers instead. But with five people you cross a certain invisible threshold, hopelessly beyond “a couple” status (as in, “Yeah, we cancelled the reading; only a couple of folks showed up”) but not close enough to double digits to fudge for your publicist (“It was an okay crowd, a dozen or so”).

In the past, when I was going to lots of readings and not reading at them, I could never understand why authors would always breeze in just as the reading was going to start. It struck me as rude. Now I get it.

There is nothing more excruciating—aside from writing itself—than waiting around for people to show up to your reading.

Julianna looked minorly disgusted. This was my hometown, after all. And this was all I could draw?

“It looks like you’ll have time for dinner with your parents,” she whispered to me, as the seconds ticked past miserably.

Thankfully, the San Francisco crowd was merely tardy. Pretty soon, my twin brother, Mike, showed up with a few friends. Then my aunt Alice. Then a couple of Julianna groupies. And pretty soon we had a respectable little gathering.

My mother was the first person to ask a question (of course), but the most awkward moment came when Mike raised his hand.

“I’m not sure how I feel about being replaced as a twin,” he said.

Julianna regarded him with a slightly forced expression of mirth. “I can assure you,” she said, “that I have no intention of replacing you. No, Steve is all yours. Do with him what you will.”

She and my mother laughed uproariously.

I arrived at the LitPac reading in time to see Aimee Bender and Pam Houston rock the house and even got to share a quick sandwich with my parents, both of whom were thoroughly, annoyingly, inextricably charmed by Julianna.

I don’t think they would have been quite so charmed, though, if they had seen Julianna in action the next morning, at the airport.

Have I mentioned that Julianna is an impatient person?

Have I mentioned that she doesn’t like lines of any kind?

Well she doesn’t.

And may God have mercy on any fellow passenger who tries to cut in line if she is around.

I certainly hope that God will have mercy on the elderly Chinese couple who—looking pretty disoriented, frankly—attempted to slip past Julianna, to the front of the line.

“Oh no you don’t,” she bellowed. “This is the line. Right here. You have to go to the back of the line. Yeah, you. I’m talking to you.”

I realize you think I’m exaggerating for effect.

I am not.

All this, of course, makes me grateful that my mother didn’t say anything offensive to my coauthor.

A writer of my emotional delicacy can only handle so much conflict.

Hasta la Portland,
Steve

•••

I was looking forward to the San Fran reading because I was going to meet Mr. and Mrs. Almond. The originators. I was curious, too, about which Steve would show up. Would he be more respectful in front of his folks? It was hard to say.

We got to the reading early and while Steve got a jump on signing stock, I wandered down Stockton Street. A young pervie guy asked me where I’ve been all his life and, as I pull my pocket book in close to my body and questioned my choice of skirt, I thought: I’ve been in my own life, I guess.

And for some reason this doesn’t seem like such a good thing—having been so deeply in my own life. But I’ve got my head up now and I’m taking it all in. It felt good to be anonymous in a big city.

I must have looked like someone who’s got nowhere to go and who’s feeling wistful because what happened next was nothing less than a street scuffle for my soul.

The Scientologist got me first. With Mission Impossible reflexes, he handed me a ticket, a personal invitation for free personality and intelligence tests, which, according to the ticket, “have everything to do with your income, your future, your personal relationships, and your life,” to which I thought, “Duh.” Furthermore, what if I learned that I’m both stupid and a bitch. It seems like everyone should have the option of saying, “I may be stupid but at least I’m a nice person” or “I may not be nice, but I sure am smart.”

Fifteen feet away, L. Ron Hubbard’s peeps were offering free stress tests. Even though the Scientologist’s feelings were obviously hurt, I ambled over. Did I mention that I stopped at the King of Thai Noodle House for a drink? I was feeling calm, like I could ace the test. What you do is hold onto these metal tubes connected by wires to a little lie detector-like contraption. The lady asks a question, and the needles on the contraption waver and then shoot up. Turns out Almond makes me stressed. But so do a lot of things—academia, hurricanes, tree frogs. I’m a freak, basically. I need to read Dianetics (or La Dianética). In the middle of the woman’s pitch, a young Latina walked up and announced, “Jesus loves you! He died for your sins and he’s the only way you’re going to get stress-free!”

This was way out of bounds, and the Dianetics lady gave her a look that said so. The Scientologist was edging in too. He’d been holding back, you know, politely, but if they were going to throw down, they could count him in.

“Okay,” the Dianetics woman said. “That’s enough.”

But it clearly wasn’t. The girl piped up a few more times about Jesus’ abundant love for me, which was beginning to seem like borderline creepy love.

I had somewhere to be. I had Almonds to meet. I thanked everyone. Who knew my soul had such street value?

In the bookstore before the reading, I met the Almonds. They are wonderful. Steve’s father has a very gentle, almost shy manner and an easy smile. Steve’s mother is petite, gracious, and fabulously proud of her son. She has a true radiance. At the beginning of my reading, I told them that it’s an honor to read for them tonight, and I thanked them for their workmanship, how they have shaped this son of theirs with such attention and care. I pushed it, maybe a little, when I thanked them for their really intricate work—their really complicated cross-stitching on his psyche, on the Byzantine structural underpinnings of what is Steve Almond. But I joked. It was funny. We all laughed.

I want to mention that there was a hybrid Steve in San Fran—some Old Steve, some New Steve—a gas-electric version. Let’s call him Prius Steve. During the evening, I gave him my free intelligence and personality test ticket. It is, after all, a one hundred dollar value. This is the kind of thoughtfulness that keeps the tour rolling along so smoothly.

Soulfully yours,
Julianna

 

This is the fourth installment in a series of Postcards written by Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott, coauthors of Which Brings Me to You (Algonquin Books, 2006), while on tour to promote their book.

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 1: Postcard From Boston
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 2: Postcard From New York City
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 3: Postcard From Los Angeles

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 5: Postcard From Portland, Oregon

by

Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott

5.24.06

Online Only

Why is Portland, Oregon, my favorite city in which to read? Let me count the ways.

1. It has the single greatest bookstore on earth. (That would be Powell’s).

2. It is the most literary city in America, as evidenced by the massive turnout at the Wordstock literary festival, where I read a couple of weeks ago.

3. People not related to me actually show up to my readings.

4. And not just nonrelatives mind you, but quality fans. The chief example I would cite here is a woman named Viva Las Vegas, who attended a reading of mine several years ago, then invited me to see her perform later that night. Viva was (and is, so far as I know) a stripper.

So my mood was good as we landed in Portland. Julianna and I had been on the road for five straight days. We had traveled four thousand miles. My suitcase contained thirteen bottles of free hotel shampoo. I had exactly one clean pair of boxer shorts left.

While Julianna was dropped off at the hotel, I proceeded to Lincoln High School, where I had agreed (for reasons that now elude me) to speak to a class of eleventh-graders.

I had forgotten just how miserable junior year in high school could be, but the sight of these faces—pocked with acne and skepticism—brought it all back.

It was pretty much a disaster, the kind of disaster that results from a tired writer trying to be hip for a bunch of surly teenagers. I’m not sure they entirely understood why I was there. Then the kicker: At the end of class, one of the only kids who asked questions came up to me and inquired, with great seriousness, if I would like to worship with him at his church.

“I’m a Jew,” I said.

“That’s okay,” he said, beatifically.

“I’m an atheist,” I said.

“I don’t mind.”

So now I’m invited to worship at the Portland Church of Christ.

I returned to the hotel, which was called the Heathman and featured a doorman in Beefeater costume, for whom I felt a sort of thermonuclear pity.

I lay on my bed and tried to clear my head of the miseries of adolescence and fell into a deep sleep, which was interrupted by the sound of my cell phone alerting me to a new message.

It was Julianna. She was speaking in agitated tones.

“I’m standing alone in a room with five thousand shrimp—there’s oysters, crab, they’ve got hot appetizers plus free cosmos, wine, beer, whatever you want plus the dessert room, the cheese, a stinky cheese room, and hot stuff, you’ve got to get down here Almond, do you understand? It’s all free. Come down to the lobby, I’m alone and I’m afraid of what I might do.”

As should be clear by now, Julianna and I are not spending massive amounts of time with each other outside the context of readings. Actually, we are not spending any time with each other at all.

But this was a special circumstance, one that invoked the holiest unspoken law of the writing profession: Thou shalt alert your fellow writer to free food.

I was in the lobby within minutes. Julianna was not exaggerating. The hotel staff had laid out a feast of Roman proportions. It was a promotional gambit, an annual “client appreciation buffet” laid out to show influential members of the Portland community just how extravagant a spread the Heathman could lay out.

I found Julianna in front of the raw bar, swilling a cosmo and staring at the mountains of oysters on the half-shell.

“I told you,” she said. “I’ve been here for half an hour, just me and entire edible population of Puget Sound.”

There is no need to detail what happened next. Anyone who is a writer—or starving artist of any kind—knows the scenario.

I do feel I should mention the revulsion we both felt upon entering what we dubbed the “Lord of the Flies” banquet room, which contained a whole suckling pig, head and tail included.

That was about as much American superabundance as either one of us could take.

Still, it was nice to bond with Julianna, to spy on the various corporate types, to talk a little bit about our families, and to mock the funk calypso stylings of the band Night Train.

And this good will carried over to the reading itself, which was the best of the tour, I’d say. We had a big crowd and they laughed in all the right spots and the question-and-answer portion went swimmingly too. Powell’s had given us two separate mics, which meant we didn’t have to shove one another out of the way. So that was nice.

The only sore spot of the reading was that my old friend Claudia had come out with her darling, six-year-old daughter, Megan.

Now listen: I absolutely love when parents bring kids to readings. Really, I do. Given the declining rates of literacy in this country, it’s just about the most inspiring vision I can imagine.

The problem is that there’s not a lot in Which Brings Me to You that could be considered kid appropriate. In fact, within the chapters I wrote, there’s almost nothing.

And so I had to turn to Claudia in front of the entire crowd and explain to her that she might maybe-if-it-was-alright want to have Megan spend the next half hour in the kid’s section of the bookstore.

Megan looked at her mother, her mother whispered something, and Megan fled the room, while the rest of the crowd went “Awwwww.”

I felt like a bad man. I am a bad man.

And yet, at the same time, Claudia had read the book. She had to have known that six-year-olds are not my core demographic.

As for the rest of the crowd, they might have felt bad for the kid, but they were also horndogs of the first order (one more thing to love about Portland) and were happy enough to hear the rude bits.

After the reading, we signed a shitload of books and Julianna headed off with her brother-in-law, who, not to insult him, but was too cheap to buy the book.

Then it was off for some late-night pizza and beers with some Portland writer pals of mine, and we had a jolly old time drinking in moderation and gossiping flagrantly and, toward midnight, heading to the famous Voodoo Donuts, a donut shop so supremely weird and cool that it makes Dunkin Donuts look like a hospital cafeteria.

I crashed hard that night, in the full knowledge that we had just one more city to go. Seattle, that caffeinated, soggy, hipster destination.

Here’s hoping our last stop comes with cream and two sugars,
Steve

•••

I feel like I should briefly note our travel demeanor thus far.

Steve and I do not sit near each other at the gate before boarding.

We do not sit next to each other on the plane.

Almond sometimes offers me food from his seemingly endless travel supply.

Sometimes I accept a bonbon or a yogurt—even if I’m not hungry—just to help maintain good will.

Steve and I often do talk in the cab rides to the airport—an ongoing discussion of the definition of narcissism, which he seems to think he knows a lot about because his parents are both psychotherapists, but about which I have much to say, surprisingly. When our narcissism debate fails, we sometimes talk about ourselves. Or, as is often the case, Steve talks to real estate agents on his cell phone—which has an ear piece and dangling wires and makes him seem like he’s just speaking loudly and irately to his own reflection in the cab window. Sometimes I wonder if there maybe isn’t anyone on the other line at all, and Steve’s just kind of losing it. (Anyone who’s read Steve’s very public and quite dark opinions on literary agents won’t find it surprising that he also has issues with real estate agents. Buying this house, his first, may just put him over the edge.)

These Postcards have become ammo. When I comment on the two-day-old Indian food left-overs that Steve’s still hauling, he says, “Go ahead. Put it in the Postcard.” When we’re running late to a flight and I bark at an elderly Asian couple trying to butt in line, I know where it’s headed. The Postcards are a good thing. They help to keep us in check.

The minimal interaction and meager attempts at manners and restraint are small but important choices that make it possible for us to continue on—uninjured.

In Portland, however, our spirits are high. We are thrice charmed and—should I jinx it?—almost getting along.

Charm A. Steve starts the day all flustered about Condoleeza Rice. Evidently, Boston College, where Almond has been an adjunct professor for the past five years, has invited Ms. Rice to be their commencement speaker. He’s saying things like, “I can’t work at an institution that celebrates war criminals.”

I suggest an open letter to the Boston Globe—like Sharon Olds’s letter declining an invitation from Laura Bush. I suggest an open letter of public resignation. Steve loves the idea.

This may not seem like a charm, but trust me, it is. Steve loves to be outraged. He loves the ire. It lends him his joie de vivre, his je ne sais quoi, his essential Almond center. He’s thankful for the suggestion.

Charm B. It’s Customer Appreciation Day at the Heathman Hotel. At 4:30 P.M. I find myself alone in a banquet room stacked with seafood—I mean to tell you there are tongs in a bin of crab, piles of muscles and clams, and mounds of shrimp on ice. There’s another room devoted to pastries, another just for stinky cheeses, another for meaty things—including an entire pig, snout to tail. There are drinks everywhere and a banquet table of cosmopolitans that seems to stretch as far as the eye can see.

I call Steve on the phone. I explain the free decadence in an urgent whisper. I tell him to get down here pronto.

Moments later, holding my cosmopolitans (I’ve taken two just in case a crowd suddenly descends), hunched over a platter of a little bit of everything—the brie is liquid, did I mention this? You just pour it over the bread—Steve rounds a corner, wide-eyed and breathless. We eat until we can’t eat anymore. It’s a glimpse of the open buffet that must exist in heaven. I’m ebullient enough to ignore Steve pocketing oranges from the display. This is a bonding experience.

Charm C. Steve calls my brother-in-law a cheapskate. I’ve wanted to do this for years. The guy comes to my readings and has never bought a book. Not a one. He was an English major at Princeton where he learned one sole skill, as far as I can tell: how to work the words “English major at Princeton” into every conversation. Steve calls him a cheapskate, says, “Nice family you married into,” jokingly, after the reading. And for this I will be eternally grateful.

In a food coma,
Julianna

 

This is the fifth installment in a series of Postcards written by Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott, coauthors of Which Brings Me to You (Algonquin Books, 2006), while on tour to promote their book.

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 1: Postcard From Boston
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 2: Postcard From New York City
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 3: Postcard From Los Angeles
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 4: Postcard From San Francisco

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 6: Postcard From Seattle

by

Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott

5.26.06

Online Only

Another day, another strange encounter in an airport. This one with Charles D’Ambrosio, who wound up on the same flight as ours from Portland to Seattle.

My wife had just seen D’Ambrosio read and had lent me his story collection, the most excellent Dead Fish Museum. Thus I was able to tell him—without even resorting to fibbing—that I was reading his book and enjoying the hell out of it, though his stories aren’t exactly of the laugh-riot variety. (They are more of the breakdown-and-sob-at-the-lovely-hopelessness-of-it-all variety.)

They had seated us all in the same row, with D’Ambrosio next to Julianna. He politely offered to trade seats with me, an offer that both my coauthor and I immediately deemed unnecessary, unwanted, and ill-advised.

I don’t mean to imply here that Julianna and I were sick of each other. Indeed, there is no need to imply. As D’Ambrosio could see from our expressions, it was very public information at this point.

A word in our own defense: It is not easy to spend six straight days traveling with another person, let alone another writer, let alone a coauthor with whom you have had some of the nastiest verbal brawls in literary history.

And yet, as we arrived in Seattle and grabbed a cab to our radio interview at KOUW, I felt a surge of camaraderie. I watched Julianna rooting around in her bag for her cell phone and felt that I might even miss her—or at least the memory of her abusing elderly Chinese travelers.

This feeling did not last long. In fact, I can tell you the precise moment it ended. It was about five minutes into our interview, when Julianna’s cell phone began ringing. So this was bad. Live radio. The sound of a cell phone. Bad.

But what made it especially mortifying was that Julianna didn’t seem to know what to do. Six days on the road with me had somewhat dulled her reaction time. And thus her phone rang four times—clearly audible to the listening audience—before she could turn it off. Then it issued a final ring a minute later to alert her to the arrival of a new message.

Now, I know a lot of coauthors who, in this situation, would have gotten upset and possibly even confiscated the cell phone in question. But I am a gentle man by disposition, and more than a little frightened of Julianna, and thus, I kept my mouth shut.

Besides, this was our last night! Why bicker over something petty like being made a fool of on the radio? It happens to me all the time.

Instead, I took a cab back to the hotel, driven by a nice fellow named Ahmed who, in addition to displaying a dazzling disregard for Seattle’s vehicular laws, informed me that he was a writer.

“I have been working on a book about my experiences in this country for eight years. I drive around and all the time I’m thinking about how I want it to go. The problem is getting them from here,” he said, tapping his forehead, “onto the piece of paper.”

I tried to say something sympathetic, but all I could think of was: “Yes, it really is hard, Ahmed. Fortunately, I know a truly excellent novelist who would be willing to tutor you for as long as you need—for free.”

Again, I kid.

I would never think to subject Ahmed to Julianna’s abuse.

From the hotel, I headed over to see my pals Clay and Robin and their insanely cute one-year-old hellion, George.

Then it was straight to the University Bookstore for our closing performance, which was, if I may say so, the best of the whole tour.

It wasn’t just that we chose good passages to read and answered the questions well. It was that we both had a great time.

All joking aside: I know that the tour was tough for Julianna. Even though she didn’t say this to me outright, I could tell that she missed her family quite a bit. It’s impossible for me to understand how hard the tour must have been for her, given that I got to see my spouse and that I don’t yet have kids to miss.

And if it means anything, I’m incredibly proud of how well she read, how sharp and funny she was, not to mention how lightly she packed. Of course, I would never say this to her face, as she would probably bite my head off for being cloying and/or condescending.

One more thing I wouldn’t say to her face: She’s a bit of a role model for me. By which I mean that I hope I’m able to be even half as productive as she’s been, while supporting my family. (Actually, upon consideration, I would settle for a third as productive.)

All of which brings me to the final scene of our little Tour-That-Sort-Of-Could-And-Did, which took place in the Seattle Airport.

Julianna was flying Continental. I was on American.

Unbeknownst to me, I would spend the next five hours trapped in the Seattle Airport because of foul weather in Chicago and would eventually have to catch a flight to Hartford, via Charlotte, thus arriving at my home outside Boston at three in the morning.

But all that comes later.

The moment I’m thinking of was one of those quiet, embarrassed times when two world-class loudmouths suddenly find themselves short on words.

“Well,” I said, “I guess this is it. Safe travels.”

“You too,” Julianna said.

“Right,” I said. I shuffled my feet a bit. “All things considered, I think things went pretty well. With the tour, I mean.”

Julianna nodded. “No broken bones, no broken egos.”

“None that I can find.” Before the moment could gather too much maudlin momentum, she added, in her best smartass tone, “Still, let’s agree to never, ever do this again.”

“Right,” I said. “Deal.”

Then we hugged and went our separate ways.

Now officially flying solo,
Steve

•••

At this point on a typical book tour, authors don’t smell so good—especially authors who are dedicated to carry-on luggage. Steve admits that he might be a little ripe. I stink of sour wine and mint shampoo, and not in a good way. Did I mention that I poured a full glass of pinot grigio on myself two cities back? Soaked down to the underwear. (Note: A padded bra can absorb a lot of alcohol.)

It turns out that I can spot an author on tour at about twenty paces. Telltale signs? The face is wearing a shocked expression, simultaneously wired and exhausted, and depending on how long he’s been on tour there’s the aforementioned odor and/or a lingering hopefulness around the eyebrows.

Waiting for the flight to Seattle at the Portland airport, I spot one. I estimate he’s on day three. His eyebrows are perked and he still looks fresh. I walk up to him and ask. I should mention that it’s one of my dreams to have someone come up to me in an airport and ask me if I’m an author. I’d prefer they recognized me from the book jacket of their favorite book instead of just picking me out of the crowd based on my facial expression, but still.

“So, are you an author on tour?” I ask. He replies, “Um, yes. How could you tell?” I should confess that I had heard this guy on his cell phone talking about “reading shorter next time” and “maybe funnier stuff” too. So I’m not exactly clairvoyant, but still and all—some credit, please. I tell him it’s written all over him.

The author turns out to be Charlie D’Ambrosio, author of the story collection Dead Fish Museum, which Steve has recently started reading and admires. I like D’Ambrosio from the get-go. He seems sincere and ironic.

It is at this moment in the terminal when I’m hit by one of the attacks—the weird attacks that have been coming and going for a few years during this collaboration with Steve. It’s this overwhelming feeling of being misunderstood.

If I had to pick one person in the entire world who might think I’m capable of, well, not evil, but some word implying bad intentions, it would be Steve Almond. I don’t quite know why the attack hits when I meet D’Ambrosio. I doubt he can tell I’m having one—the attacks have no outward symptoms, as far as I know. (Then again, damn, could I have been twitching?) This feeling is always quickly followed by a wave of homesickness—even when I’m at home. Basically, I want to be with people who know and trust me.

As if Continental Airlines can feel the current vibe between Steve and me, we are seated in a row at the back of the plane, separated by D’Ambrosio. (Steve has joked that our separate seating is an FAA regulation.)

While Steve hammers away at his open letter-resignation for the Boston Globe, D’Ambrosio and I spend the hour in full commiseration mode. I’m missing my family terribly, but restrain myself from going into details about all that I’ve been absent from: my daughter’s bicycle-powered ice-cream churner, my oldest son’s first big stage appearance, my youngest son’s most recent chest-trap give-and-go soccer goal. My husband and I are usually inseparable. I miss how hard we make each other laugh. I miss how we can’t stop talking to each other even when we’re brushing our teeth. Not each other’s teeth—we talk to each other while we’re each brushing our own teeth—we aren’t that inseparable. I miss how as soon as we hug in the kitchen one of our kids comes between us to bust it up like a chaperone at a school dance.

I tell D’Ambrosio that I’m a little stunned to find myself on a book tour. I signed onto a job of solitude and coffee and imagination. How did we end up traveling salesmen? Are we suited to this? Are we selling actual books to people other than our family members (minus my brother-in-law)? D’Ambrosio is on his way to a country music station for an interview. Do they think his book is about fishing? We’re baffled, but, for a moment, we’re happy to be baffled together.

Seattle. The final foofaraw. It’s the sixth city on the tour and it’s like Steve and I finally get it. There are many levels of bullshit to our relationship, but it seems like we’ve both gotten out of the bullshit elevator on the same floor this time.

At the University Bookstore reading, I don’t foul up my words like I did in Portland, where I told the crowd that Steve and I had eaten dozens of pinafores. After some confused looks from the audience, I finally realized pinafores are little jumper dresses. Of course, I meant to say petits fours, the delicious pastry—not to be confused with petticoats.

Steve does it all just right in Seattle too. Playing to his natural interests, he reads only the dirty sections of the book. And the question-and-answer portion is perfecto.

There’s plenty of love and hate in our relationship, and when we err, we err on the side of hate—naturally and rightly so. But for all my blather, do I really hate or even really dislike Steve Almond? Of course not. He’s a man of conviction. He’s passionate about literature and music and politics. He’s a brilliant writer. I also think he’ll make a wonderful father come September.

But I’m thinking about a line in the novel—one of Jane’s lines. “When I’m with you, will I be closer to the person I want to be?” I have to admit that I don’t like the character of Julianna Baggott in Steve Almond’s world. I don’t recognize her. I don’t really want to know her. And after an investment of three years in this collaboration, that’s a pretty tough realization to walk away with. I guess I’d prefer to have put some good in the world—not bookishly, but personally—and I’m afraid I’ve failed.

The next morning, when we get to the Seattle airport, the cab pulls up behind a truck labeled Bomb Disposal Unit. Steve, the cabbie, and I look on with some nervous laughter as it pulls away. Are we to believe it’s hauling off some dismantled bomb that will be disposed of later? This seems like an apt metaphor. There has been no explosion on this book tour either. We’ve made our way through it without blowing each other to smithereens.

I follow Steve into the airport. I’ll remember him this way—talking to his real estate lawyer on his cell phone’s ear piece while walking to the ticket counter, carrying his old-fashion, wheel-less, buckled suitcase, which is crammed with pilfered hotel toiletries.

We give each other a hug that seems congratulatory and then turn in opposite directions. No backward glance, no final wave. It strikes me as a little sad the way we both set off so quickly into the bustle of strangers.

On my way home,
Julianna

 

This is the sixth and final installment in a series of
Postcards written by Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott, coauthors of Which Brings Me to You (Algonquin Books, 2006), while on tour to promote their book.

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 1: Postcard From Boston
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 2: Postcard From New York City
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 3: Postcard From Los Angeles
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 4: Postcard From San Francisco
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 5: Postcard From Portland, Oregon

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 6: Postcard From Seattle

by

Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott

5.26.06

Online Only

Another day, another strange encounter in an airport. This one with Charles D’Ambrosio, who wound up on the same flight as ours from Portland to Seattle.

My wife had just seen D’Ambrosio read and had lent me his story collection, the most excellent Dead Fish Museum. Thus I was able to tell him—without even resorting to fibbing—that I was reading his book and enjoying the hell out of it, though his stories aren’t exactly of the laugh-riot variety. (They are more of the breakdown-and-sob-at-the-lovely-hopelessness-of-it-all variety.)

They had seated us all in the same row, with D’Ambrosio next to Julianna. He politely offered to trade seats with me, an offer that both my coauthor and I immediately deemed unnecessary, unwanted, and ill-advised.

I don’t mean to imply here that Julianna and I were sick of each other. Indeed, there is no need to imply. As D’Ambrosio could see from our expressions, it was very public information at this point.

A word in our own defense: It is not easy to spend six straight days traveling with another person, let alone another writer, let alone a coauthor with whom you have had some of the nastiest verbal brawls in literary history.

And yet, as we arrived in Seattle and grabbed a cab to our radio interview at KOUW, I felt a surge of camaraderie. I watched Julianna rooting around in her bag for her cell phone and felt that I might even miss her—or at least the memory of her abusing elderly Chinese travelers.

This feeling did not last long. In fact, I can tell you the precise moment it ended. It was about five minutes into our interview, when Julianna’s cell phone began ringing. So this was bad. Live radio. The sound of a cell phone. Bad.

But what made it especially mortifying was that Julianna didn’t seem to know what to do. Six days on the road with me had somewhat dulled her reaction time. And thus her phone rang four times—clearly audible to the listening audience—before she could turn it off. Then it issued a final ring a minute later to alert her to the arrival of a new message.

Now, I know a lot of coauthors who, in this situation, would have gotten upset and possibly even confiscated the cell phone in question. But I am a gentle man by disposition, and more than a little frightened of Julianna, and thus, I kept my mouth shut.

Besides, this was our last night! Why bicker over something petty like being made a fool of on the radio? It happens to me all the time.

Instead, I took a cab back to the hotel, driven by a nice fellow named Ahmed who, in addition to displaying a dazzling disregard for Seattle’s vehicular laws, informed me that he was a writer.

“I have been working on a book about my experiences in this country for eight years. I drive around and all the time I’m thinking about how I want it to go. The problem is getting them from here,” he said, tapping his forehead, “onto the piece of paper.”

I tried to say something sympathetic, but all I could think of was: “Yes, it really is hard, Ahmed. Fortunately, I know a truly excellent novelist who would be willing to tutor you for as long as you need—for free.”

Again, I kid.

I would never think to subject Ahmed to Julianna’s abuse.

From the hotel, I headed over to see my pals Clay and Robin and their insanely cute one-year-old hellion, George.

Then it was straight to the University Bookstore for our closing performance, which was, if I may say so, the best of the whole tour.

It wasn’t just that we chose good passages to read and answered the questions well. It was that we both had a great time.

All joking aside: I know that the tour was tough for Julianna. Even though she didn’t say this to me outright, I could tell that she missed her family quite a bit. It’s impossible for me to understand how hard the tour must have been for her, given that I got to see my spouse and that I don’t yet have kids to miss.

And if it means anything, I’m incredibly proud of how well she read, how sharp and funny she was, not to mention how lightly she packed. Of course, I would never say this to her face, as she would probably bite my head off for being cloying and/or condescending.

One more thing I wouldn’t say to her face: She’s a bit of a role model for me. By which I mean that I hope I’m able to be even half as productive as she’s been, while supporting my family. (Actually, upon consideration, I would settle for a third as productive.)

All of which brings me to the final scene of our little Tour-That-Sort-Of-Could-And-Did, which took place in the Seattle Airport.

Julianna was flying Continental. I was on American.

Unbeknownst to me, I would spend the next five hours trapped in the Seattle Airport because of foul weather in Chicago and would eventually have to catch a flight to Hartford, via Charlotte, thus arriving at my home outside Boston at three in the morning.

But all that comes later.

The moment I’m thinking of was one of those quiet, embarrassed times when two world-class loudmouths suddenly find themselves short on words.

“Well,” I said, “I guess this is it. Safe travels.”

“You too,” Julianna said.

“Right,” I said. I shuffled my feet a bit. “All things considered, I think things went pretty well. With the tour, I mean.”

Julianna nodded. “No broken bones, no broken egos.”

“None that I can find.” Before the moment could gather too much maudlin momentum, she added, in her best smartass tone, “Still, let’s agree to never, ever do this again.”

“Right,” I said. “Deal.”

Then we hugged and went our separate ways.

Now officially flying solo,
Steve

•••

At this point on a typical book tour, authors don’t smell so good—especially authors who are dedicated to carry-on luggage. Steve admits that he might be a little ripe. I stink of sour wine and mint shampoo, and not in a good way. Did I mention that I poured a full glass of pinot grigio on myself two cities back? Soaked down to the underwear. (Note: A padded bra can absorb a lot of alcohol.)

It turns out that I can spot an author on tour at about twenty paces. Telltale signs? The face is wearing a shocked expression, simultaneously wired and exhausted, and depending on how long he’s been on tour there’s the aforementioned odor and/or a lingering hopefulness around the eyebrows.

Waiting for the flight to Seattle at the Portland airport, I spot one. I estimate he’s on day three. His eyebrows are perked and he still looks fresh. I walk up to him and ask. I should mention that it’s one of my dreams to have someone come up to me in an airport and ask me if I’m an author. I’d prefer they recognized me from the book jacket of their favorite book instead of just picking me out of the crowd based on my facial expression, but still.

“So, are you an author on tour?” I ask. He replies, “Um, yes. How could you tell?” I should confess that I had heard this guy on his cell phone talking about “reading shorter next time” and “maybe funnier stuff” too. So I’m not exactly clairvoyant, but still and all—some credit, please. I tell him it’s written all over him.

The author turns out to be Charlie D’Ambrosio, author of the story collection Dead Fish Museum, which Steve has recently started reading and admires. I like D’Ambrosio from the get-go. He seems sincere and ironic.

It is at this moment in the terminal when I’m hit by one of the attacks—the weird attacks that have been coming and going for a few years during this collaboration with Steve. It’s this overwhelming feeling of being misunderstood.

If I had to pick one person in the entire world who might think I’m capable of, well, not evil, but some word implying bad intentions, it would be Steve Almond. I don’t quite know why the attack hits when I meet D’Ambrosio. I doubt he can tell I’m having one—the attacks have no outward symptoms, as far as I know. (Then again, damn, could I have been twitching?) This feeling is always quickly followed by a wave of homesickness—even when I’m at home. Basically, I want to be with people who know and trust me.

As if Continental Airlines can feel the current vibe between Steve and me, we are seated in a row at the back of the plane, separated by D’Ambrosio. (Steve has joked that our separate seating is an FAA regulation.)

While Steve hammers away at his open letter-resignation for the Boston Globe, D’Ambrosio and I spend the hour in full commiseration mode. I’m missing my family terribly, but restrain myself from going into details about all that I’ve been absent from: my daughter’s bicycle-powered ice-cream churner, my oldest son’s first big stage appearance, my youngest son’s most recent chest-trap give-and-go soccer goal. My husband and I are usually inseparable. I miss how hard we make each other laugh. I miss how we can’t stop talking to each other even when we’re brushing our teeth. Not each other’s teeth—we talk to each other while we’re each brushing our own teeth—we aren’t that inseparable. I miss how as soon as we hug in the kitchen one of our kids comes between us to bust it up like a chaperone at a school dance.

I tell D’Ambrosio that I’m a little stunned to find myself on a book tour. I signed onto a job of solitude and coffee and imagination. How did we end up traveling salesmen? Are we suited to this? Are we selling actual books to people other than our family members (minus my brother-in-law)? D’Ambrosio is on his way to a country music station for an interview. Do they think his book is about fishing? We’re baffled, but, for a moment, we’re happy to be baffled together.

Seattle. The final foofaraw. It’s the sixth city on the tour and it’s like Steve and I finally get it. There are many levels of bullshit to our relationship, but it seems like we’ve both gotten out of the bullshit elevator on the same floor this time.

At the University Bookstore reading, I don’t foul up my words like I did in Portland, where I told the crowd that Steve and I had eaten dozens of pinafores. After some confused looks from the audience, I finally realized pinafores are little jumper dresses. Of course, I meant to say petits fours, the delicious pastry—not to be confused with petticoats.

Steve does it all just right in Seattle too. Playing to his natural interests, he reads only the dirty sections of the book. And the question-and-answer portion is perfecto.

There’s plenty of love and hate in our relationship, and when we err, we err on the side of hate—naturally and rightly so. But for all my blather, do I really hate or even really dislike Steve Almond? Of course not. He’s a man of conviction. He’s passionate about literature and music and politics. He’s a brilliant writer. I also think he’ll make a wonderful father come September.

But I’m thinking about a line in the novel—one of Jane’s lines. “When I’m with you, will I be closer to the person I want to be?” I have to admit that I don’t like the character of Julianna Baggott in Steve Almond’s world. I don’t recognize her. I don’t really want to know her. And after an investment of three years in this collaboration, that’s a pretty tough realization to walk away with. I guess I’d prefer to have put some good in the world—not bookishly, but personally—and I’m afraid I’ve failed.

The next morning, when we get to the Seattle airport, the cab pulls up behind a truck labeled Bomb Disposal Unit. Steve, the cabbie, and I look on with some nervous laughter as it pulls away. Are we to believe it’s hauling off some dismantled bomb that will be disposed of later? This seems like an apt metaphor. There has been no explosion on this book tour either. We’ve made our way through it without blowing each other to smithereens.

I follow Steve into the airport. I’ll remember him this way—talking to his real estate lawyer on his cell phone’s ear piece while walking to the ticket counter, carrying his old-fashion, wheel-less, buckled suitcase, which is crammed with pilfered hotel toiletries.

We give each other a hug that seems congratulatory and then turn in opposite directions. No backward glance, no final wave. It strikes me as a little sad the way we both set off so quickly into the bustle of strangers.

On my way home,
Julianna

 

This is the sixth and final installment in a series of
Postcards written by Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott, coauthors of Which Brings Me to You (Algonquin Books, 2006), while on tour to promote their book.

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 1: Postcard From Boston
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 2: Postcard From New York City
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 3: Postcard From Los Angeles
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 4: Postcard From San Francisco
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 5: Postcard From Portland, Oregon

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 5: Postcard From Portland, Oregon

by

Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott

5.24.06

Online Only

Why is Portland, Oregon, my favorite city in which to read? Let me count the ways.

1. It has the single greatest bookstore on earth. (That would be Powell’s).

2. It is the most literary city in America, as evidenced by the massive turnout at the Wordstock literary festival, where I read a couple of weeks ago.

3. People not related to me actually show up to my readings.

4. And not just nonrelatives mind you, but quality fans. The chief example I would cite here is a woman named Viva Las Vegas, who attended a reading of mine several years ago, then invited me to see her perform later that night. Viva was (and is, so far as I know) a stripper.

So my mood was good as we landed in Portland. Julianna and I had been on the road for five straight days. We had traveled four thousand miles. My suitcase contained thirteen bottles of free hotel shampoo. I had exactly one clean pair of boxer shorts left.

While Julianna was dropped off at the hotel, I proceeded to Lincoln High School, where I had agreed (for reasons that now elude me) to speak to a class of eleventh-graders.

I had forgotten just how miserable junior year in high school could be, but the sight of these faces—pocked with acne and skepticism—brought it all back.

It was pretty much a disaster, the kind of disaster that results from a tired writer trying to be hip for a bunch of surly teenagers. I’m not sure they entirely understood why I was there. Then the kicker: At the end of class, one of the only kids who asked questions came up to me and inquired, with great seriousness, if I would like to worship with him at his church.

“I’m a Jew,” I said.

“That’s okay,” he said, beatifically.

“I’m an atheist,” I said.

“I don’t mind.”

So now I’m invited to worship at the Portland Church of Christ.

I returned to the hotel, which was called the Heathman and featured a doorman in Beefeater costume, for whom I felt a sort of thermonuclear pity.

I lay on my bed and tried to clear my head of the miseries of adolescence and fell into a deep sleep, which was interrupted by the sound of my cell phone alerting me to a new message.

It was Julianna. She was speaking in agitated tones.

“I’m standing alone in a room with five thousand shrimp—there’s oysters, crab, they’ve got hot appetizers plus free cosmos, wine, beer, whatever you want plus the dessert room, the cheese, a stinky cheese room, and hot stuff, you’ve got to get down here Almond, do you understand? It’s all free. Come down to the lobby, I’m alone and I’m afraid of what I might do.”

As should be clear by now, Julianna and I are not spending massive amounts of time with each other outside the context of readings. Actually, we are not spending any time with each other at all.

But this was a special circumstance, one that invoked the holiest unspoken law of the writing profession: Thou shalt alert your fellow writer to free food.

I was in the lobby within minutes. Julianna was not exaggerating. The hotel staff had laid out a feast of Roman proportions. It was a promotional gambit, an annual “client appreciation buffet” laid out to show influential members of the Portland community just how extravagant a spread the Heathman could lay out.

I found Julianna in front of the raw bar, swilling a cosmo and staring at the mountains of oysters on the half-shell.

“I told you,” she said. “I’ve been here for half an hour, just me and entire edible population of Puget Sound.”

There is no need to detail what happened next. Anyone who is a writer—or starving artist of any kind—knows the scenario.

I do feel I should mention the revulsion we both felt upon entering what we dubbed the “Lord of the Flies” banquet room, which contained a whole suckling pig, head and tail included.

That was about as much American superabundance as either one of us could take.

Still, it was nice to bond with Julianna, to spy on the various corporate types, to talk a little bit about our families, and to mock the funk calypso stylings of the band Night Train.

And this good will carried over to the reading itself, which was the best of the tour, I’d say. We had a big crowd and they laughed in all the right spots and the question-and-answer portion went swimmingly too. Powell’s had given us two separate mics, which meant we didn’t have to shove one another out of the way. So that was nice.

The only sore spot of the reading was that my old friend Claudia had come out with her darling, six-year-old daughter, Megan.

Now listen: I absolutely love when parents bring kids to readings. Really, I do. Given the declining rates of literacy in this country, it’s just about the most inspiring vision I can imagine.

The problem is that there’s not a lot in Which Brings Me to You that could be considered kid appropriate. In fact, within the chapters I wrote, there’s almost nothing.

And so I had to turn to Claudia in front of the entire crowd and explain to her that she might maybe-if-it-was-alright want to have Megan spend the next half hour in the kid’s section of the bookstore.

Megan looked at her mother, her mother whispered something, and Megan fled the room, while the rest of the crowd went “Awwwww.”

I felt like a bad man. I am a bad man.

And yet, at the same time, Claudia had read the book. She had to have known that six-year-olds are not my core demographic.

As for the rest of the crowd, they might have felt bad for the kid, but they were also horndogs of the first order (one more thing to love about Portland) and were happy enough to hear the rude bits.

After the reading, we signed a shitload of books and Julianna headed off with her brother-in-law, who, not to insult him, but was too cheap to buy the book.

Then it was off for some late-night pizza and beers with some Portland writer pals of mine, and we had a jolly old time drinking in moderation and gossiping flagrantly and, toward midnight, heading to the famous Voodoo Donuts, a donut shop so supremely weird and cool that it makes Dunkin Donuts look like a hospital cafeteria.

I crashed hard that night, in the full knowledge that we had just one more city to go. Seattle, that caffeinated, soggy, hipster destination.

Here’s hoping our last stop comes with cream and two sugars,
Steve

•••

I feel like I should briefly note our travel demeanor thus far.

Steve and I do not sit near each other at the gate before boarding.

We do not sit next to each other on the plane.

Almond sometimes offers me food from his seemingly endless travel supply.

Sometimes I accept a bonbon or a yogurt—even if I’m not hungry—just to help maintain good will.

Steve and I often do talk in the cab rides to the airport—an ongoing discussion of the definition of narcissism, which he seems to think he knows a lot about because his parents are both psychotherapists, but about which I have much to say, surprisingly. When our narcissism debate fails, we sometimes talk about ourselves. Or, as is often the case, Steve talks to real estate agents on his cell phone—which has an ear piece and dangling wires and makes him seem like he’s just speaking loudly and irately to his own reflection in the cab window. Sometimes I wonder if there maybe isn’t anyone on the other line at all, and Steve’s just kind of losing it. (Anyone who’s read Steve’s very public and quite dark opinions on literary agents won’t find it surprising that he also has issues with real estate agents. Buying this house, his first, may just put him over the edge.)

These Postcards have become ammo. When I comment on the two-day-old Indian food left-overs that Steve’s still hauling, he says, “Go ahead. Put it in the Postcard.” When we’re running late to a flight and I bark at an elderly Asian couple trying to butt in line, I know where it’s headed. The Postcards are a good thing. They help to keep us in check.

The minimal interaction and meager attempts at manners and restraint are small but important choices that make it possible for us to continue on—uninjured.

In Portland, however, our spirits are high. We are thrice charmed and—should I jinx it?—almost getting along.

Charm A. Steve starts the day all flustered about Condoleeza Rice. Evidently, Boston College, where Almond has been an adjunct professor for the past five years, has invited Ms. Rice to be their commencement speaker. He’s saying things like, “I can’t work at an institution that celebrates war criminals.”

I suggest an open letter to the Boston Globe—like Sharon Olds’s letter declining an invitation from Laura Bush. I suggest an open letter of public resignation. Steve loves the idea.

This may not seem like a charm, but trust me, it is. Steve loves to be outraged. He loves the ire. It lends him his joie de vivre, his je ne sais quoi, his essential Almond center. He’s thankful for the suggestion.

Charm B. It’s Customer Appreciation Day at the Heathman Hotel. At 4:30 P.M. I find myself alone in a banquet room stacked with seafood—I mean to tell you there are tongs in a bin of crab, piles of muscles and clams, and mounds of shrimp on ice. There’s another room devoted to pastries, another just for stinky cheeses, another for meaty things—including an entire pig, snout to tail. There are drinks everywhere and a banquet table of cosmopolitans that seems to stretch as far as the eye can see.

I call Steve on the phone. I explain the free decadence in an urgent whisper. I tell him to get down here pronto.

Moments later, holding my cosmopolitans (I’ve taken two just in case a crowd suddenly descends), hunched over a platter of a little bit of everything—the brie is liquid, did I mention this? You just pour it over the bread—Steve rounds a corner, wide-eyed and breathless. We eat until we can’t eat anymore. It’s a glimpse of the open buffet that must exist in heaven. I’m ebullient enough to ignore Steve pocketing oranges from the display. This is a bonding experience.

Charm C. Steve calls my brother-in-law a cheapskate. I’ve wanted to do this for years. The guy comes to my readings and has never bought a book. Not a one. He was an English major at Princeton where he learned one sole skill, as far as I can tell: how to work the words “English major at Princeton” into every conversation. Steve calls him a cheapskate, says, “Nice family you married into,” jokingly, after the reading. And for this I will be eternally grateful.

In a food coma,
Julianna

 

This is the fifth installment in a series of Postcards written by Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott, coauthors of Which Brings Me to You (Algonquin Books, 2006), while on tour to promote their book.

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 1: Postcard From Boston
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 2: Postcard From New York City
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 3: Postcard From Los Angeles
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 4: Postcard From San Francisco
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 6: Postcard From Seattle

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 6: Postcard From Seattle

by

Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott

5.26.06

Online Only

Another day, another strange encounter in an airport. This one with Charles D’Ambrosio, who wound up on the same flight as ours from Portland to Seattle.

My wife had just seen D’Ambrosio read and had lent me his story collection, the most excellent Dead Fish Museum. Thus I was able to tell him—without even resorting to fibbing—that I was reading his book and enjoying the hell out of it, though his stories aren’t exactly of the laugh-riot variety. (They are more of the breakdown-and-sob-at-the-lovely-hopelessness-of-it-all variety.)

They had seated us all in the same row, with D’Ambrosio next to Julianna. He politely offered to trade seats with me, an offer that both my coauthor and I immediately deemed unnecessary, unwanted, and ill-advised.

I don’t mean to imply here that Julianna and I were sick of each other. Indeed, there is no need to imply. As D’Ambrosio could see from our expressions, it was very public information at this point.

A word in our own defense: It is not easy to spend six straight days traveling with another person, let alone another writer, let alone a coauthor with whom you have had some of the nastiest verbal brawls in literary history.

And yet, as we arrived in Seattle and grabbed a cab to our radio interview at KOUW, I felt a surge of camaraderie. I watched Julianna rooting around in her bag for her cell phone and felt that I might even miss her—or at least the memory of her abusing elderly Chinese travelers.

This feeling did not last long. In fact, I can tell you the precise moment it ended. It was about five minutes into our interview, when Julianna’s cell phone began ringing. So this was bad. Live radio. The sound of a cell phone. Bad.

But what made it especially mortifying was that Julianna didn’t seem to know what to do. Six days on the road with me had somewhat dulled her reaction time. And thus her phone rang four times—clearly audible to the listening audience—before she could turn it off. Then it issued a final ring a minute later to alert her to the arrival of a new message.

Now, I know a lot of coauthors who, in this situation, would have gotten upset and possibly even confiscated the cell phone in question. But I am a gentle man by disposition, and more than a little frightened of Julianna, and thus, I kept my mouth shut.

Besides, this was our last night! Why bicker over something petty like being made a fool of on the radio? It happens to me all the time.

Instead, I took a cab back to the hotel, driven by a nice fellow named Ahmed who, in addition to displaying a dazzling disregard for Seattle’s vehicular laws, informed me that he was a writer.

“I have been working on a book about my experiences in this country for eight years. I drive around and all the time I’m thinking about how I want it to go. The problem is getting them from here,” he said, tapping his forehead, “onto the piece of paper.”

I tried to say something sympathetic, but all I could think of was: “Yes, it really is hard, Ahmed. Fortunately, I know a truly excellent novelist who would be willing to tutor you for as long as you need—for free.”

Again, I kid.

I would never think to subject Ahmed to Julianna’s abuse.

From the hotel, I headed over to see my pals Clay and Robin and their insanely cute one-year-old hellion, George.

Then it was straight to the University Bookstore for our closing performance, which was, if I may say so, the best of the whole tour.

It wasn’t just that we chose good passages to read and answered the questions well. It was that we both had a great time.

All joking aside: I know that the tour was tough for Julianna. Even though she didn’t say this to me outright, I could tell that she missed her family quite a bit. It’s impossible for me to understand how hard the tour must have been for her, given that I got to see my spouse and that I don’t yet have kids to miss.

And if it means anything, I’m incredibly proud of how well she read, how sharp and funny she was, not to mention how lightly she packed. Of course, I would never say this to her face, as she would probably bite my head off for being cloying and/or condescending.

One more thing I wouldn’t say to her face: She’s a bit of a role model for me. By which I mean that I hope I’m able to be even half as productive as she’s been, while supporting my family. (Actually, upon consideration, I would settle for a third as productive.)

All of which brings me to the final scene of our little Tour-That-Sort-Of-Could-And-Did, which took place in the Seattle Airport.

Julianna was flying Continental. I was on American.

Unbeknownst to me, I would spend the next five hours trapped in the Seattle Airport because of foul weather in Chicago and would eventually have to catch a flight to Hartford, via Charlotte, thus arriving at my home outside Boston at three in the morning.

But all that comes later.

The moment I’m thinking of was one of those quiet, embarrassed times when two world-class loudmouths suddenly find themselves short on words.

“Well,” I said, “I guess this is it. Safe travels.”

“You too,” Julianna said.

“Right,” I said. I shuffled my feet a bit. “All things considered, I think things went pretty well. With the tour, I mean.”

Julianna nodded. “No broken bones, no broken egos.”

“None that I can find.” Before the moment could gather too much maudlin momentum, she added, in her best smartass tone, “Still, let’s agree to never, ever do this again.”

“Right,” I said. “Deal.”

Then we hugged and went our separate ways.

Now officially flying solo,
Steve

•••

At this point on a typical book tour, authors don’t smell so good—especially authors who are dedicated to carry-on luggage. Steve admits that he might be a little ripe. I stink of sour wine and mint shampoo, and not in a good way. Did I mention that I poured a full glass of pinot grigio on myself two cities back? Soaked down to the underwear. (Note: A padded bra can absorb a lot of alcohol.)

It turns out that I can spot an author on tour at about twenty paces. Telltale signs? The face is wearing a shocked expression, simultaneously wired and exhausted, and depending on how long he’s been on tour there’s the aforementioned odor and/or a lingering hopefulness around the eyebrows.

Waiting for the flight to Seattle at the Portland airport, I spot one. I estimate he’s on day three. His eyebrows are perked and he still looks fresh. I walk up to him and ask. I should mention that it’s one of my dreams to have someone come up to me in an airport and ask me if I’m an author. I’d prefer they recognized me from the book jacket of their favorite book instead of just picking me out of the crowd based on my facial expression, but still.

“So, are you an author on tour?” I ask. He replies, “Um, yes. How could you tell?” I should confess that I had heard this guy on his cell phone talking about “reading shorter next time” and “maybe funnier stuff” too. So I’m not exactly clairvoyant, but still and all—some credit, please. I tell him it’s written all over him.

The author turns out to be Charlie D’Ambrosio, author of the story collection Dead Fish Museum, which Steve has recently started reading and admires. I like D’Ambrosio from the get-go. He seems sincere and ironic.

It is at this moment in the terminal when I’m hit by one of the attacks—the weird attacks that have been coming and going for a few years during this collaboration with Steve. It’s this overwhelming feeling of being misunderstood.

If I had to pick one person in the entire world who might think I’m capable of, well, not evil, but some word implying bad intentions, it would be Steve Almond. I don’t quite know why the attack hits when I meet D’Ambrosio. I doubt he can tell I’m having one—the attacks have no outward symptoms, as far as I know. (Then again, damn, could I have been twitching?) This feeling is always quickly followed by a wave of homesickness—even when I’m at home. Basically, I want to be with people who know and trust me.

As if Continental Airlines can feel the current vibe between Steve and me, we are seated in a row at the back of the plane, separated by D’Ambrosio. (Steve has joked that our separate seating is an FAA regulation.)

While Steve hammers away at his open letter-resignation for the Boston Globe, D’Ambrosio and I spend the hour in full commiseration mode. I’m missing my family terribly, but restrain myself from going into details about all that I’ve been absent from: my daughter’s bicycle-powered ice-cream churner, my oldest son’s first big stage appearance, my youngest son’s most recent chest-trap give-and-go soccer goal. My husband and I are usually inseparable. I miss how hard we make each other laugh. I miss how we can’t stop talking to each other even when we’re brushing our teeth. Not each other’s teeth—we talk to each other while we’re each brushing our own teeth—we aren’t that inseparable. I miss how as soon as we hug in the kitchen one of our kids comes between us to bust it up like a chaperone at a school dance.

I tell D’Ambrosio that I’m a little stunned to find myself on a book tour. I signed onto a job of solitude and coffee and imagination. How did we end up traveling salesmen? Are we suited to this? Are we selling actual books to people other than our family members (minus my brother-in-law)? D’Ambrosio is on his way to a country music station for an interview. Do they think his book is about fishing? We’re baffled, but, for a moment, we’re happy to be baffled together.

Seattle. The final foofaraw. It’s the sixth city on the tour and it’s like Steve and I finally get it. There are many levels of bullshit to our relationship, but it seems like we’ve both gotten out of the bullshit elevator on the same floor this time.

At the University Bookstore reading, I don’t foul up my words like I did in Portland, where I told the crowd that Steve and I had eaten dozens of pinafores. After some confused looks from the audience, I finally realized pinafores are little jumper dresses. Of course, I meant to say petits fours, the delicious pastry—not to be confused with petticoats.

Steve does it all just right in Seattle too. Playing to his natural interests, he reads only the dirty sections of the book. And the question-and-answer portion is perfecto.

There’s plenty of love and hate in our relationship, and when we err, we err on the side of hate—naturally and rightly so. But for all my blather, do I really hate or even really dislike Steve Almond? Of course not. He’s a man of conviction. He’s passionate about literature and music and politics. He’s a brilliant writer. I also think he’ll make a wonderful father come September.

But I’m thinking about a line in the novel—one of Jane’s lines. “When I’m with you, will I be closer to the person I want to be?” I have to admit that I don’t like the character of Julianna Baggott in Steve Almond’s world. I don’t recognize her. I don’t really want to know her. And after an investment of three years in this collaboration, that’s a pretty tough realization to walk away with. I guess I’d prefer to have put some good in the world—not bookishly, but personally—and I’m afraid I’ve failed.

The next morning, when we get to the Seattle airport, the cab pulls up behind a truck labeled Bomb Disposal Unit. Steve, the cabbie, and I look on with some nervous laughter as it pulls away. Are we to believe it’s hauling off some dismantled bomb that will be disposed of later? This seems like an apt metaphor. There has been no explosion on this book tour either. We’ve made our way through it without blowing each other to smithereens.

I follow Steve into the airport. I’ll remember him this way—talking to his real estate lawyer on his cell phone’s ear piece while walking to the ticket counter, carrying his old-fashion, wheel-less, buckled suitcase, which is crammed with pilfered hotel toiletries.

We give each other a hug that seems congratulatory and then turn in opposite directions. No backward glance, no final wave. It strikes me as a little sad the way we both set off so quickly into the bustle of strangers.

On my way home,
Julianna

 

This is the sixth and final installment in a series of
Postcards written by Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott, coauthors of Which Brings Me to You (Algonquin Books, 2006), while on tour to promote their book.

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 1: Postcard From Boston
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 2: Postcard From New York City
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 3: Postcard From Los Angeles
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 4: Postcard From San Francisco
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 5: Postcard From Portland, Oregon

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 4: Postcard From San Francisco

by

Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott

5.17.06

Online Only

As I stepped off the plane at the San Francisco International Airport, a strange, terrifying thought gripped me: Julianna will be meeting my mother tonight. It would be a momentous event. The two women most capable of humiliating me in public would be in the same room—and no doubt interacting during the question-and-answer session.

I could tell from that little extra pep in Julianna’s step that she was looking forward to it.

“You’re not going to embarrass me tonight, right?” I asked her as we lugged our bags toward the taxi stand.

“I wasn’t aware you were capable of embarrassment,” Julianna murmured. She was grinning in a way I would not characterize as benign. “If you’re referring to meeting your parents, I’m very much looking forward to that,” she said primly. “Yes. The Almond parents. Very interesting.”

Yes, very interesting.

Another interesting potential disaster: I was scheduled to do two readings in San Francisco, the first, with Julianna, at Cody’s bookstore, the second for a progressive group called LitPac.

The reading at Cody’s was at 6 PM and, according to my itinerary, the LitPac reading was at 10 PM. No problem. I figured I’d even have time for a leisurely dinner with my folks and Julianna, at which my mom and Julianna could share a few thousand laughs over my personal hygiene.

So I called Stephen Elliot, the writer who organized the LitPac event, to get directions.

“When do I actually need to be there?” I asked.

“The readings start at 7 PM,” he said cheerfully.

“W-w-w-what?” I said. “But my itinerary says 10 PM.”

“Hmmmm,” Elliot said. “That must be my e-mail program. When I send stuff to the east coast, it automatically adjusts to the time zone.”

There is no need to quote the ensuing exchange. The crucial thing is that Elliot assured me (in that relaxed manner Californians have) that I could show up as late as 8 PM, as there were other readers. So din-din was out.

On the taxi ride into the city, I explained the situation to Julianna, and this segued into a broader discussion about book tours.

My take on the subject: It’s an honor to be sent on a book tour (particularly by Algonquin, a company that takes good care of its authors) and you shouldn’t bitch. Not only that, you should be grateful, because the book tour allows you to promote your work more broadly and the book in question, which hopefully results in royalties down the road. I pointed out that bands are often expected to pay their own way on tour.

Julianna’s attitude ran more like this: I was paid to write the book. You are now asking me to take another week out of my schedule to promote the book, an exhausting week during which I will not get any real work done, because I will be busy lugging bags through airports and conducting idiotic arguments with my thick-skulled coauthor.

Well. I imagine having three kids and a full-time university gig (as Julianna does) might change my perspective.

Did I mention the Hotel Monaco?

It was quite possibly the nicest hotel ever to welcome me. It was certainly the only one to offer fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies at the front desk, of which I ate three, then proceeded to my room and spent fifteen minutes staring worshipfully at the toiletry items.

And the bed! The bed was so lavish, so broad, so perfect, that I didn’t even want to lie down. It seemed wrong for someone as fundamentally poor and dirty as myself to soil such a bed. So I took a bath and power-napped for ten minutes, then Julianna and I cabbed over to the Haight, where we did not in fact purchase any hash, instead opting to sign books at the local indie, The Booksmith.

Then it was back downtown for a rendezvous with my parents, those irresistible psychoanalysts Don Ricci and Babs Almond. They showed up five minutes before the reading started, fresh from their analytic chairs and beaming. I made the introductions, and they told Julianna how much they admired her writing and did not (as I might have suggested to them, during a less-balanced moment a few months back) recommend that she seek long-term therapy.

This is what I love about my parents: They are a class act.

Unfortunately, they were also exactly two-fifths of the audience, the other three members of the “crowd” being college pals.

Now any touring writer will tell you that a crowd of five is about the worst you can do. Because, really, with just three or four people you can sort of appeal to their common sense and go out for beers instead. But with five people you cross a certain invisible threshold, hopelessly beyond “a couple” status (as in, “Yeah, we cancelled the reading; only a couple of folks showed up”) but not close enough to double digits to fudge for your publicist (“It was an okay crowd, a dozen or so”).

In the past, when I was going to lots of readings and not reading at them, I could never understand why authors would always breeze in just as the reading was going to start. It struck me as rude. Now I get it.

There is nothing more excruciating—aside from writing itself—than waiting around for people to show up to your reading.

Julianna looked minorly disgusted. This was my hometown, after all. And this was all I could draw?

“It looks like you’ll have time for dinner with your parents,” she whispered to me, as the seconds ticked past miserably.

Thankfully, the San Francisco crowd was merely tardy. Pretty soon, my twin brother, Mike, showed up with a few friends. Then my aunt Alice. Then a couple of Julianna groupies. And pretty soon we had a respectable little gathering.

My mother was the first person to ask a question (of course), but the most awkward moment came when Mike raised his hand.

“I’m not sure how I feel about being replaced as a twin,” he said.

Julianna regarded him with a slightly forced expression of mirth. “I can assure you,” she said, “that I have no intention of replacing you. No, Steve is all yours. Do with him what you will.”

She and my mother laughed uproariously.

I arrived at the LitPac reading in time to see Aimee Bender and Pam Houston rock the house and even got to share a quick sandwich with my parents, both of whom were thoroughly, annoyingly, inextricably charmed by Julianna.

I don’t think they would have been quite so charmed, though, if they had seen Julianna in action the next morning, at the airport.

Have I mentioned that Julianna is an impatient person?

Have I mentioned that she doesn’t like lines of any kind?

Well she doesn’t.

And may God have mercy on any fellow passenger who tries to cut in line if she is around.

I certainly hope that God will have mercy on the elderly Chinese couple who—looking pretty disoriented, frankly—attempted to slip past Julianna, to the front of the line.

“Oh no you don’t,” she bellowed. “This is the line. Right here. You have to go to the back of the line. Yeah, you. I’m talking to you.”

I realize you think I’m exaggerating for effect.

I am not.

All this, of course, makes me grateful that my mother didn’t say anything offensive to my coauthor.

A writer of my emotional delicacy can only handle so much conflict.

Hasta la Portland,
Steve

•••

I was looking forward to the San Fran reading because I was going to meet Mr. and Mrs. Almond. The originators. I was curious, too, about which Steve would show up. Would he be more respectful in front of his folks? It was hard to say.

We got to the reading early and while Steve got a jump on signing stock, I wandered down Stockton Street. A young pervie guy asked me where I’ve been all his life and, as I pull my pocket book in close to my body and questioned my choice of skirt, I thought: I’ve been in my own life, I guess.

And for some reason this doesn’t seem like such a good thing—having been so deeply in my own life. But I’ve got my head up now and I’m taking it all in. It felt good to be anonymous in a big city.

I must have looked like someone who’s got nowhere to go and who’s feeling wistful because what happened next was nothing less than a street scuffle for my soul.

The Scientologist got me first. With Mission Impossible reflexes, he handed me a ticket, a personal invitation for free personality and intelligence tests, which, according to the ticket, “have everything to do with your income, your future, your personal relationships, and your life,” to which I thought, “Duh.” Furthermore, what if I learned that I’m both stupid and a bitch. It seems like everyone should have the option of saying, “I may be stupid but at least I’m a nice person” or “I may not be nice, but I sure am smart.”

Fifteen feet away, L. Ron Hubbard’s peeps were offering free stress tests. Even though the Scientologist’s feelings were obviously hurt, I ambled over. Did I mention that I stopped at the King of Thai Noodle House for a drink? I was feeling calm, like I could ace the test. What you do is hold onto these metal tubes connected by wires to a little lie detector-like contraption. The lady asks a question, and the needles on the contraption waver and then shoot up. Turns out Almond makes me stressed. But so do a lot of things—academia, hurricanes, tree frogs. I’m a freak, basically. I need to read Dianetics (or La Dianética). In the middle of the woman’s pitch, a young Latina walked up and announced, “Jesus loves you! He died for your sins and he’s the only way you’re going to get stress-free!”

This was way out of bounds, and the Dianetics lady gave her a look that said so. The Scientologist was edging in too. He’d been holding back, you know, politely, but if they were going to throw down, they could count him in.

“Okay,” the Dianetics woman said. “That’s enough.”

But it clearly wasn’t. The girl piped up a few more times about Jesus’ abundant love for me, which was beginning to seem like borderline creepy love.

I had somewhere to be. I had Almonds to meet. I thanked everyone. Who knew my soul had such street value?

In the bookstore before the reading, I met the Almonds. They are wonderful. Steve’s father has a very gentle, almost shy manner and an easy smile. Steve’s mother is petite, gracious, and fabulously proud of her son. She has a true radiance. At the beginning of my reading, I told them that it’s an honor to read for them tonight, and I thanked them for their workmanship, how they have shaped this son of theirs with such attention and care. I pushed it, maybe a little, when I thanked them for their really intricate work—their really complicated cross-stitching on his psyche, on the Byzantine structural underpinnings of what is Steve Almond. But I joked. It was funny. We all laughed.

I want to mention that there was a hybrid Steve in San Fran—some Old Steve, some New Steve—a gas-electric version. Let’s call him Prius Steve. During the evening, I gave him my free intelligence and personality test ticket. It is, after all, a one hundred dollar value. This is the kind of thoughtfulness that keeps the tour rolling along so smoothly.

Soulfully yours,
Julianna

 

This is the fourth installment in a series of Postcards written by Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott, coauthors of Which Brings Me to You (Algonquin Books, 2006), while on tour to promote their book.

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 1: Postcard From Boston
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 2: Postcard From New York City
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 3: Postcard From Los Angeles
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 5: Postcard From Portland, Oregon
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 6: Postcard From Seattle

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 5: Postcard From Portland, Oregon

by

Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott

5.24.06

Online Only

Why is Portland, Oregon, my favorite city in which to read? Let me count the ways.

1. It has the single greatest bookstore on earth. (That would be Powell’s).

2. It is the most literary city in America, as evidenced by the massive turnout at the Wordstock literary festival, where I read a couple of weeks ago.

3. People not related to me actually show up to my readings.

4. And not just nonrelatives mind you, but quality fans. The chief example I would cite here is a woman named Viva Las Vegas, who attended a reading of mine several years ago, then invited me to see her perform later that night. Viva was (and is, so far as I know) a stripper.

So my mood was good as we landed in Portland. Julianna and I had been on the road for five straight days. We had traveled four thousand miles. My suitcase contained thirteen bottles of free hotel shampoo. I had exactly one clean pair of boxer shorts left.

While Julianna was dropped off at the hotel, I proceeded to Lincoln High School, where I had agreed (for reasons that now elude me) to speak to a class of eleventh-graders.

I had forgotten just how miserable junior year in high school could be, but the sight of these faces—pocked with acne and skepticism—brought it all back.

It was pretty much a disaster, the kind of disaster that results from a tired writer trying to be hip for a bunch of surly teenagers. I’m not sure they entirely understood why I was there. Then the kicker: At the end of class, one of the only kids who asked questions came up to me and inquired, with great seriousness, if I would like to worship with him at his church.

“I’m a Jew,” I said.

“That’s okay,” he said, beatifically.

“I’m an atheist,” I said.

“I don’t mind.”

So now I’m invited to worship at the Portland Church of Christ.

I returned to the hotel, which was called the Heathman and featured a doorman in Beefeater costume, for whom I felt a sort of thermonuclear pity.

I lay on my bed and tried to clear my head of the miseries of adolescence and fell into a deep sleep, which was interrupted by the sound of my cell phone alerting me to a new message.

It was Julianna. She was speaking in agitated tones.

“I’m standing alone in a room with five thousand shrimp—there’s oysters, crab, they’ve got hot appetizers plus free cosmos, wine, beer, whatever you want plus the dessert room, the cheese, a stinky cheese room, and hot stuff, you’ve got to get down here Almond, do you understand? It’s all free. Come down to the lobby, I’m alone and I’m afraid of what I might do.”

As should be clear by now, Julianna and I are not spending massive amounts of time with each other outside the context of readings. Actually, we are not spending any time with each other at all.

But this was a special circumstance, one that invoked the holiest unspoken law of the writing profession: Thou shalt alert your fellow writer to free food.

I was in the lobby within minutes. Julianna was not exaggerating. The hotel staff had laid out a feast of Roman proportions. It was a promotional gambit, an annual “client appreciation buffet” laid out to show influential members of the Portland community just how extravagant a spread the Heathman could lay out.

I found Julianna in front of the raw bar, swilling a cosmo and staring at the mountains of oysters on the half-shell.

“I told you,” she said. “I’ve been here for half an hour, just me and entire edible population of Puget Sound.”

There is no need to detail what happened next. Anyone who is a writer—or starving artist of any kind—knows the scenario.

I do feel I should mention the revulsion we both felt upon entering what we dubbed the “Lord of the Flies” banquet room, which contained a whole suckling pig, head and tail included.

That was about as much American superabundance as either one of us could take.

Still, it was nice to bond with Julianna, to spy on the various corporate types, to talk a little bit about our families, and to mock the funk calypso stylings of the band Night Train.

And this good will carried over to the reading itself, which was the best of the tour, I’d say. We had a big crowd and they laughed in all the right spots and the question-and-answer portion went swimmingly too. Powell’s had given us two separate mics, which meant we didn’t have to shove one another out of the way. So that was nice.

The only sore spot of the reading was that my old friend Claudia had come out with her darling, six-year-old daughter, Megan.

Now listen: I absolutely love when parents bring kids to readings. Really, I do. Given the declining rates of literacy in this country, it’s just about the most inspiring vision I can imagine.

The problem is that there’s not a lot in Which Brings Me to You that could be considered kid appropriate. In fact, within the chapters I wrote, there’s almost nothing.

And so I had to turn to Claudia in front of the entire crowd and explain to her that she might maybe-if-it-was-alright want to have Megan spend the next half hour in the kid’s section of the bookstore.

Megan looked at her mother, her mother whispered something, and Megan fled the room, while the rest of the crowd went “Awwwww.”

I felt like a bad man. I am a bad man.

And yet, at the same time, Claudia had read the book. She had to have known that six-year-olds are not my core demographic.

As for the rest of the crowd, they might have felt bad for the kid, but they were also horndogs of the first order (one more thing to love about Portland) and were happy enough to hear the rude bits.

After the reading, we signed a shitload of books and Julianna headed off with her brother-in-law, who, not to insult him, but was too cheap to buy the book.

Then it was off for some late-night pizza and beers with some Portland writer pals of mine, and we had a jolly old time drinking in moderation and gossiping flagrantly and, toward midnight, heading to the famous Voodoo Donuts, a donut shop so supremely weird and cool that it makes Dunkin Donuts look like a hospital cafeteria.

I crashed hard that night, in the full knowledge that we had just one more city to go. Seattle, that caffeinated, soggy, hipster destination.

Here’s hoping our last stop comes with cream and two sugars,
Steve

•••

I feel like I should briefly note our travel demeanor thus far.

Steve and I do not sit near each other at the gate before boarding.

We do not sit next to each other on the plane.

Almond sometimes offers me food from his seemingly endless travel supply.

Sometimes I accept a bonbon or a yogurt—even if I’m not hungry—just to help maintain good will.

Steve and I often do talk in the cab rides to the airport—an ongoing discussion of the definition of narcissism, which he seems to think he knows a lot about because his parents are both psychotherapists, but about which I have much to say, surprisingly. When our narcissism debate fails, we sometimes talk about ourselves. Or, as is often the case, Steve talks to real estate agents on his cell phone—which has an ear piece and dangling wires and makes him seem like he’s just speaking loudly and irately to his own reflection in the cab window. Sometimes I wonder if there maybe isn’t anyone on the other line at all, and Steve’s just kind of losing it. (Anyone who’s read Steve’s very public and quite dark opinions on literary agents won’t find it surprising that he also has issues with real estate agents. Buying this house, his first, may just put him over the edge.)

These Postcards have become ammo. When I comment on the two-day-old Indian food left-overs that Steve’s still hauling, he says, “Go ahead. Put it in the Postcard.” When we’re running late to a flight and I bark at an elderly Asian couple trying to butt in line, I know where it’s headed. The Postcards are a good thing. They help to keep us in check.

The minimal interaction and meager attempts at manners and restraint are small but important choices that make it possible for us to continue on—uninjured.

In Portland, however, our spirits are high. We are thrice charmed and—should I jinx it?—almost getting along.

Charm A. Steve starts the day all flustered about Condoleeza Rice. Evidently, Boston College, where Almond has been an adjunct professor for the past five years, has invited Ms. Rice to be their commencement speaker. He’s saying things like, “I can’t work at an institution that celebrates war criminals.”

I suggest an open letter to the Boston Globe—like Sharon Olds’s letter declining an invitation from Laura Bush. I suggest an open letter of public resignation. Steve loves the idea.

This may not seem like a charm, but trust me, it is. Steve loves to be outraged. He loves the ire. It lends him his joie de vivre, his je ne sais quoi, his essential Almond center. He’s thankful for the suggestion.

Charm B. It’s Customer Appreciation Day at the Heathman Hotel. At 4:30 P.M. I find myself alone in a banquet room stacked with seafood—I mean to tell you there are tongs in a bin of crab, piles of muscles and clams, and mounds of shrimp on ice. There’s another room devoted to pastries, another just for stinky cheeses, another for meaty things—including an entire pig, snout to tail. There are drinks everywhere and a banquet table of cosmopolitans that seems to stretch as far as the eye can see.

I call Steve on the phone. I explain the free decadence in an urgent whisper. I tell him to get down here pronto.

Moments later, holding my cosmopolitans (I’ve taken two just in case a crowd suddenly descends), hunched over a platter of a little bit of everything—the brie is liquid, did I mention this? You just pour it over the bread—Steve rounds a corner, wide-eyed and breathless. We eat until we can’t eat anymore. It’s a glimpse of the open buffet that must exist in heaven. I’m ebullient enough to ignore Steve pocketing oranges from the display. This is a bonding experience.

Charm C. Steve calls my brother-in-law a cheapskate. I’ve wanted to do this for years. The guy comes to my readings and has never bought a book. Not a one. He was an English major at Princeton where he learned one sole skill, as far as I can tell: how to work the words “English major at Princeton” into every conversation. Steve calls him a cheapskate, says, “Nice family you married into,” jokingly, after the reading. And for this I will be eternally grateful.

In a food coma,
Julianna

 

This is the fifth installment in a series of Postcards written by Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott, coauthors of Which Brings Me to You (Algonquin Books, 2006), while on tour to promote their book.

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 1: Postcard From Boston
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 2: Postcard From New York City
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 3: Postcard From Los Angeles
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 4: Postcard From San Francisco
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 6: Postcard From Seattle

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 6: Postcard From Seattle

by

Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott

5.26.06

Online Only

Another day, another strange encounter in an airport. This one with Charles D’Ambrosio, who wound up on the same flight as ours from Portland to Seattle.

My wife had just seen D’Ambrosio read and had lent me his story collection, the most excellent Dead Fish Museum. Thus I was able to tell him—without even resorting to fibbing—that I was reading his book and enjoying the hell out of it, though his stories aren’t exactly of the laugh-riot variety. (They are more of the breakdown-and-sob-at-the-lovely-hopelessness-of-it-all variety.)

They had seated us all in the same row, with D’Ambrosio next to Julianna. He politely offered to trade seats with me, an offer that both my coauthor and I immediately deemed unnecessary, unwanted, and ill-advised.

I don’t mean to imply here that Julianna and I were sick of each other. Indeed, there is no need to imply. As D’Ambrosio could see from our expressions, it was very public information at this point.

A word in our own defense: It is not easy to spend six straight days traveling with another person, let alone another writer, let alone a coauthor with whom you have had some of the nastiest verbal brawls in literary history.

And yet, as we arrived in Seattle and grabbed a cab to our radio interview at KOUW, I felt a surge of camaraderie. I watched Julianna rooting around in her bag for her cell phone and felt that I might even miss her—or at least the memory of her abusing elderly Chinese travelers.

This feeling did not last long. In fact, I can tell you the precise moment it ended. It was about five minutes into our interview, when Julianna’s cell phone began ringing. So this was bad. Live radio. The sound of a cell phone. Bad.

But what made it especially mortifying was that Julianna didn’t seem to know what to do. Six days on the road with me had somewhat dulled her reaction time. And thus her phone rang four times—clearly audible to the listening audience—before she could turn it off. Then it issued a final ring a minute later to alert her to the arrival of a new message.

Now, I know a lot of coauthors who, in this situation, would have gotten upset and possibly even confiscated the cell phone in question. But I am a gentle man by disposition, and more than a little frightened of Julianna, and thus, I kept my mouth shut.

Besides, this was our last night! Why bicker over something petty like being made a fool of on the radio? It happens to me all the time.

Instead, I took a cab back to the hotel, driven by a nice fellow named Ahmed who, in addition to displaying a dazzling disregard for Seattle’s vehicular laws, informed me that he was a writer.

“I have been working on a book about my experiences in this country for eight years. I drive around and all the time I’m thinking about how I want it to go. The problem is getting them from here,” he said, tapping his forehead, “onto the piece of paper.”

I tried to say something sympathetic, but all I could think of was: “Yes, it really is hard, Ahmed. Fortunately, I know a truly excellent novelist who would be willing to tutor you for as long as you need—for free.”

Again, I kid.

I would never think to subject Ahmed to Julianna’s abuse.

From the hotel, I headed over to see my pals Clay and Robin and their insanely cute one-year-old hellion, George.

Then it was straight to the University Bookstore for our closing performance, which was, if I may say so, the best of the whole tour.

It wasn’t just that we chose good passages to read and answered the questions well. It was that we both had a great time.

All joking aside: I know that the tour was tough for Julianna. Even though she didn’t say this to me outright, I could tell that she missed her family quite a bit. It’s impossible for me to understand how hard the tour must have been for her, given that I got to see my spouse and that I don’t yet have kids to miss.

And if it means anything, I’m incredibly proud of how well she read, how sharp and funny she was, not to mention how lightly she packed. Of course, I would never say this to her face, as she would probably bite my head off for being cloying and/or condescending.

One more thing I wouldn’t say to her face: She’s a bit of a role model for me. By which I mean that I hope I’m able to be even half as productive as she’s been, while supporting my family. (Actually, upon consideration, I would settle for a third as productive.)

All of which brings me to the final scene of our little Tour-That-Sort-Of-Could-And-Did, which took place in the Seattle Airport.

Julianna was flying Continental. I was on American.

Unbeknownst to me, I would spend the next five hours trapped in the Seattle Airport because of foul weather in Chicago and would eventually have to catch a flight to Hartford, via Charlotte, thus arriving at my home outside Boston at three in the morning.

But all that comes later.

The moment I’m thinking of was one of those quiet, embarrassed times when two world-class loudmouths suddenly find themselves short on words.

“Well,” I said, “I guess this is it. Safe travels.”

“You too,” Julianna said.

“Right,” I said. I shuffled my feet a bit. “All things considered, I think things went pretty well. With the tour, I mean.”

Julianna nodded. “No broken bones, no broken egos.”

“None that I can find.” Before the moment could gather too much maudlin momentum, she added, in her best smartass tone, “Still, let’s agree to never, ever do this again.”

“Right,” I said. “Deal.”

Then we hugged and went our separate ways.

Now officially flying solo,
Steve

•••

At this point on a typical book tour, authors don’t smell so good—especially authors who are dedicated to carry-on luggage. Steve admits that he might be a little ripe. I stink of sour wine and mint shampoo, and not in a good way. Did I mention that I poured a full glass of pinot grigio on myself two cities back? Soaked down to the underwear. (Note: A padded bra can absorb a lot of alcohol.)

It turns out that I can spot an author on tour at about twenty paces. Telltale signs? The face is wearing a shocked expression, simultaneously wired and exhausted, and depending on how long he’s been on tour there’s the aforementioned odor and/or a lingering hopefulness around the eyebrows.

Waiting for the flight to Seattle at the Portland airport, I spot one. I estimate he’s on day three. His eyebrows are perked and he still looks fresh. I walk up to him and ask. I should mention that it’s one of my dreams to have someone come up to me in an airport and ask me if I’m an author. I’d prefer they recognized me from the book jacket of their favorite book instead of just picking me out of the crowd based on my facial expression, but still.

“So, are you an author on tour?” I ask. He replies, “Um, yes. How could you tell?” I should confess that I had heard this guy on his cell phone talking about “reading shorter next time” and “maybe funnier stuff” too. So I’m not exactly clairvoyant, but still and all—some credit, please. I tell him it’s written all over him.

The author turns out to be Charlie D’Ambrosio, author of the story collection Dead Fish Museum, which Steve has recently started reading and admires. I like D’Ambrosio from the get-go. He seems sincere and ironic.

It is at this moment in the terminal when I’m hit by one of the attacks—the weird attacks that have been coming and going for a few years during this collaboration with Steve. It’s this overwhelming feeling of being misunderstood.

If I had to pick one person in the entire world who might think I’m capable of, well, not evil, but some word implying bad intentions, it would be Steve Almond. I don’t quite know why the attack hits when I meet D’Ambrosio. I doubt he can tell I’m having one—the attacks have no outward symptoms, as far as I know. (Then again, damn, could I have been twitching?) This feeling is always quickly followed by a wave of homesickness—even when I’m at home. Basically, I want to be with people who know and trust me.

As if Continental Airlines can feel the current vibe between Steve and me, we are seated in a row at the back of the plane, separated by D’Ambrosio. (Steve has joked that our separate seating is an FAA regulation.)

While Steve hammers away at his open letter-resignation for the Boston Globe, D’Ambrosio and I spend the hour in full commiseration mode. I’m missing my family terribly, but restrain myself from going into details about all that I’ve been absent from: my daughter’s bicycle-powered ice-cream churner, my oldest son’s first big stage appearance, my youngest son’s most recent chest-trap give-and-go soccer goal. My husband and I are usually inseparable. I miss how hard we make each other laugh. I miss how we can’t stop talking to each other even when we’re brushing our teeth. Not each other’s teeth—we talk to each other while we’re each brushing our own teeth—we aren’t that inseparable. I miss how as soon as we hug in the kitchen one of our kids comes between us to bust it up like a chaperone at a school dance.

I tell D’Ambrosio that I’m a little stunned to find myself on a book tour. I signed onto a job of solitude and coffee and imagination. How did we end up traveling salesmen? Are we suited to this? Are we selling actual books to people other than our family members (minus my brother-in-law)? D’Ambrosio is on his way to a country music station for an interview. Do they think his book is about fishing? We’re baffled, but, for a moment, we’re happy to be baffled together.

Seattle. The final foofaraw. It’s the sixth city on the tour and it’s like Steve and I finally get it. There are many levels of bullshit to our relationship, but it seems like we’ve both gotten out of the bullshit elevator on the same floor this time.

At the University Bookstore reading, I don’t foul up my words like I did in Portland, where I told the crowd that Steve and I had eaten dozens of pinafores. After some confused looks from the audience, I finally realized pinafores are little jumper dresses. Of course, I meant to say petits fours, the delicious pastry—not to be confused with petticoats.

Steve does it all just right in Seattle too. Playing to his natural interests, he reads only the dirty sections of the book. And the question-and-answer portion is perfecto.

There’s plenty of love and hate in our relationship, and when we err, we err on the side of hate—naturally and rightly so. But for all my blather, do I really hate or even really dislike Steve Almond? Of course not. He’s a man of conviction. He’s passionate about literature and music and politics. He’s a brilliant writer. I also think he’ll make a wonderful father come September.

But I’m thinking about a line in the novel—one of Jane’s lines. “When I’m with you, will I be closer to the person I want to be?” I have to admit that I don’t like the character of Julianna Baggott in Steve Almond’s world. I don’t recognize her. I don’t really want to know her. And after an investment of three years in this collaboration, that’s a pretty tough realization to walk away with. I guess I’d prefer to have put some good in the world—not bookishly, but personally—and I’m afraid I’ve failed.

The next morning, when we get to the Seattle airport, the cab pulls up behind a truck labeled Bomb Disposal Unit. Steve, the cabbie, and I look on with some nervous laughter as it pulls away. Are we to believe it’s hauling off some dismantled bomb that will be disposed of later? This seems like an apt metaphor. There has been no explosion on this book tour either. We’ve made our way through it without blowing each other to smithereens.

I follow Steve into the airport. I’ll remember him this way—talking to his real estate lawyer on his cell phone’s ear piece while walking to the ticket counter, carrying his old-fashion, wheel-less, buckled suitcase, which is crammed with pilfered hotel toiletries.

We give each other a hug that seems congratulatory and then turn in opposite directions. No backward glance, no final wave. It strikes me as a little sad the way we both set off so quickly into the bustle of strangers.

On my way home,
Julianna

 

This is the sixth and final installment in a series of
Postcards written by Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott, coauthors of Which Brings Me to You (Algonquin Books, 2006), while on tour to promote their book.

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 1: Postcard From Boston
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 2: Postcard From New York City
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 3: Postcard From Los Angeles
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 4: Postcard From San Francisco
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 5: Postcard From Portland, Oregon

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 3: Postcard From Los Angeles

by

Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott

5.15.06

Online Only

I’m going to dispense with a report on the weather, because I am writing to you from Los Angeles, where the temp is perma-locked at eighty-three degrees Fahrenheit. The famous smog is still here, the toxic velvet dusk, the gleaming impermanence of movie billboards. And—let us now thank the gods of good fortune—my new wife Erin!

Erin is finishing up her MFA at UC Irvine, and so volunteered to act as a designated chauffeur-concubine for the tour. (Just to keep the accounting clear: Erin is being paid by Algonquin for any mileage accrued. I will be paying out-of-pocket for any further services.)

It was an absolute delight to see her shining face, and she aided immeasurably in the not-constantly-getting lost process. She is also unafraid of driving in Los Angeles, which makes her braver than me by a factor of three.

The ruling authorities at Algonquin put us up at a hotel called The Grafton, on Sunset Boulevard, where the staff wear lime-green and black suits and practice that pouncing brand of politesse that I often mistake for daylight robbery. What the hell are you doing with my bag? Hey! Those car keys are mine!

The Grafton serves a fantastic lunch. I mention this because both Erin and I are big eaters, even more so now that Erin is twenty weeks pregnant and plumping up just splendidly. So our lives pretty much revolve around our next meal, or our next snack, or our next pre-snack nibble, which is to be differentiated from a “bite” (not quite a full nibble, but slightly more than a “taste”).

Erin ordered a grilled chicken sandwich with herb mayo and spiced chutney, a sandwich that made me want to swan dive with joy from our balcony table into the pool below. My burger was fabulous, well worth the requisite liberal carnivore guilt. The fries were my absolute favorite kind—crispy shoestrings—so Erin and I did a lot of bite-trading and exclaiming and frantic ketchup-dunking and gesturing with our hands.

Julianna watched this massacre with a kind of morbid fascination. After getting clearance, we finished off her fries and the rest of her salad. (Note: I had designs on the remains of her turkey club before the waitress swooped in and cleared her plate.)

The evening’s reading was at Skylight Books, my favorite indie bookstore on planet earth, and I’m not just saying that because there’s a tree growing in the middle of the shop or because the staffers are all these cool-ass zine dudes and dudettes or because they have a cat with no tail that roams the place. I am saying that because they have sold more copies of my story collection My Life in Heavy Metal than the entire Borders chain.

Call me crazy, but these are my kind of people.

The reading featured a great many dirty scenes, as read by me, and a great many poetic passages, as read by Julianna, and a great many bizarro questions, as asked by the audience.

Audience: “Did things ever get physical between you two?”

Steve: “You mean fighting, right?”

Audience: “Right.”

Steve: “No comment.”

After the reading, we proceeded to an Indian restaurant, where we sat on pillows in the banquet room and did more extreme overeating.

The next night we did a cool event organized by my pal Christine Berry at smartgals.org and held at a club called Fais Do-Do. We were the featured readers, but the real highlight was the gaggle of Los Angeles bands that played before and after us. I got to see my pal, the fabulous writer Rob Roberge, with his band The Danbury Shakes. (His wife, Gayle, played bass.) Rob isn’t some dilettante. He sings and handles his ax like a genuine rock star, albeit one who is still, at heart, a lit-nerd. A songwriter named Holly Ramos blew me away, as did The Evangenitals, who sound sort of like a cross between Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks and L’il Kim. I bought their album.

The highlight of the night was the set by The Santiago Steps. Not just because they rocked (though they did), but because, about halfway through their set Julianna got up and began dancing.

And this wasn’t some half-embarrassed swaying-in-the-shadows business. No, this was a flagrant full-body noodle-bop, conducted smack in the middle of the dance floor that was—and I want to emphasize this—totally empty except for her.

I cannot express how deeply I admire Julianna for having the cajones to do this, especially given that I do not dance in public. (Let me be more specific: My wife has forbidden me to dance in public.)

You are no doubt wondering how Julianna ranks as a dancer.

Let me just say, based on this very limited sample, that she falls somewhere between myself and Martha Graham.

And actually, before I say anything else that might get me in trouble, I am going to sign off, so I can enjoy a midnight snack of cold Indian leftovers.

Ah, the glory of the book tour!

Dialing in for the wake up call,
Steve

•••

The reading on the first night isn’t our zing dog-and-pony show. Almond still reads the smuttiest parts, his trademark, but he’s gone soft. He’s nearly—how shall I put it—respectful. He does not, for example, translate an audience member’s question into, “What you want to know is if we’ve fucked, right?”

This, I figure, has much to do with the fact that Almond is a newlywed and his wife, Erin, is pregnant and, glowingly beautiful, sitting in the front row. I didn’t know he had it in him—you know, an off-switch. For all of his shock factor, this has been the thing that’s shocked me the most.

What’s really interesting is that he doesn’t seem to know he’s turned anything off. Later, in the pillow room of an Indian restaurant (where we sit on pillows instead of chairs, hence the name), I mention our lack of rapport, but he’s genuinely baffled. He doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

How can there be a dog-and-pony show with two ponies and no dog? That would be a pony-pony show, and nobody goes to see a pony-pony show. When I explained this to my sister who’s a director-producer type, she asks, “What’s the entertainment value?” I don’t know what entertainment value is, but I answer, “Our schtick is love-hate.”

“Well, if he’s not comfortable with the love part in front of his wife, play up the hate,” she says.

This is genius, of course. I can easily play up the hate.

Luckily, by three in the afternoon I find myself at the Saddle Ranch Chop Shop. It’s LA authentic, meaning the wait staff is grungy but gorgeous and touchy—and by touchy I don’t mean irritable. I mean they actually touch you a lot. The wide planked floors look pricey, and they’re playing “Eye of the Tiger” without irony. The crème de la crème is the mechanical bull. I watch a guy get bucked into the air. He lands kind of crumpled in half. I imagine Almond mid-air and it brings back all of my old hate left over from the bitter end of our book. Why not challenge Almond to a mechanical bull-off?

I try this material out at Fais Do-do the next night—challenge and all. It doesn’t fly. In response to “play up the hate,” Almond says that he can certainly oblige. At the challenge of the mechanical bull-off, he says, “You want to ride the bull?” There’s a sound check. The end.

Or not exactly. We’re filler between sets for five bands—the most high-profile of which is The Evangenitals. I drink gin and tonic and dance even though this is clearly a listening crowd. The dancing doesn’t catch on. I apologize for the length of the evening to my sister, my cousin, my grad-school friend. I apologize to the crowd for not being an Evangenital. I tell the host we’re going out to smoke. None of us smoke. We just want to be able to hear each other. The evening goes on and on.

The next morning I wake up with a new thought. Before the tour, I signed on to the notion that the closer Steve and I mimicked the rapport of our two main characters, the better. But I was always deeply ambivalent about this setup. (One day I’ll write with distance and clarity about writing this sexy novel with someone other than my husband of thirteen years, and how there are somewhat dark social ramifications for me—even though my husband is the greatest champion of this book.)

Maybe I prefer the New Steve. Though I wish I’d seen New Steve coming, I think I will really feel much more comfortable without the love-hate entertainment value. I’ll get up and read. Steve will get up and read. We’ll answer some questions and sit down.

Plus, New Steve actually shaves, albeit ornamentally. He’s left behind this chin stuff that looks like it could turn into a handle, which, you never know, might come in handy—especially if Old Steve shows up again.

Julianna

 

This is the third installment in a series of Postcards written by Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott, coauthors of Which Brings Me to You (Algonquin Books, 2006), while on tour to promote their book.

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 1: Postcard From Boston
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 2: Postcard From New York City
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 4: Postcard From San Francisco
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 5: Postcard From Portland, Oregon
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 6: Postcard From Seattle

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 4: Postcard From San Francisco

by

Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott

5.17.06

Online Only

As I stepped off the plane at the San Francisco International Airport, a strange, terrifying thought gripped me: Julianna will be meeting my mother tonight. It would be a momentous event. The two women most capable of humiliating me in public would be in the same room—and no doubt interacting during the question-and-answer session.

I could tell from that little extra pep in Julianna’s step that she was looking forward to it.

“You’re not going to embarrass me tonight, right?” I asked her as we lugged our bags toward the taxi stand.

“I wasn’t aware you were capable of embarrassment,” Julianna murmured. She was grinning in a way I would not characterize as benign. “If you’re referring to meeting your parents, I’m very much looking forward to that,” she said primly. “Yes. The Almond parents. Very interesting.”

Yes, very interesting.

Another interesting potential disaster: I was scheduled to do two readings in San Francisco, the first, with Julianna, at Cody’s bookstore, the second for a progressive group called LitPac.

The reading at Cody’s was at 6 PM and, according to my itinerary, the LitPac reading was at 10 PM. No problem. I figured I’d even have time for a leisurely dinner with my folks and Julianna, at which my mom and Julianna could share a few thousand laughs over my personal hygiene.

So I called Stephen Elliot, the writer who organized the LitPac event, to get directions.

“When do I actually need to be there?” I asked.

“The readings start at 7 PM,” he said cheerfully.

“W-w-w-what?” I said. “But my itinerary says 10 PM.”

“Hmmmm,” Elliot said. “That must be my e-mail program. When I send stuff to the east coast, it automatically adjusts to the time zone.”

There is no need to quote the ensuing exchange. The crucial thing is that Elliot assured me (in that relaxed manner Californians have) that I could show up as late as 8 PM, as there were other readers. So din-din was out.

On the taxi ride into the city, I explained the situation to Julianna, and this segued into a broader discussion about book tours.

My take on the subject: It’s an honor to be sent on a book tour (particularly by Algonquin, a company that takes good care of its authors) and you shouldn’t bitch. Not only that, you should be grateful, because the book tour allows you to promote your work more broadly and the book in question, which hopefully results in royalties down the road. I pointed out that bands are often expected to pay their own way on tour.

Julianna’s attitude ran more like this: I was paid to write the book. You are now asking me to take another week out of my schedule to promote the book, an exhausting week during which I will not get any real work done, because I will be busy lugging bags through airports and conducting idiotic arguments with my thick-skulled coauthor.

Well. I imagine having three kids and a full-time university gig (as Julianna does) might change my perspective.

Did I mention the Hotel Monaco?

It was quite possibly the nicest hotel ever to welcome me. It was certainly the only one to offer fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies at the front desk, of which I ate three, then proceeded to my room and spent fifteen minutes staring worshipfully at the toiletry items.

And the bed! The bed was so lavish, so broad, so perfect, that I didn’t even want to lie down. It seemed wrong for someone as fundamentally poor and dirty as myself to soil such a bed. So I took a bath and power-napped for ten minutes, then Julianna and I cabbed over to the Haight, where we did not in fact purchase any hash, instead opting to sign books at the local indie, The Booksmith.

Then it was back downtown for a rendezvous with my parents, those irresistible psychoanalysts Don Ricci and Babs Almond. They showed up five minutes before the reading started, fresh from their analytic chairs and beaming. I made the introductions, and they told Julianna how much they admired her writing and did not (as I might have suggested to them, during a less-balanced moment a few months back) recommend that she seek long-term therapy.

This is what I love about my parents: They are a class act.

Unfortunately, they were also exactly two-fifths of the audience, the other three members of the “crowd” being college pals.

Now any touring writer will tell you that a crowd of five is about the worst you can do. Because, really, with just three or four people you can sort of appeal to their common sense and go out for beers instead. But with five people you cross a certain invisible threshold, hopelessly beyond “a couple” status (as in, “Yeah, we cancelled the reading; only a couple of folks showed up”) but not close enough to double digits to fudge for your publicist (“It was an okay crowd, a dozen or so”).

In the past, when I was going to lots of readings and not reading at them, I could never understand why authors would always breeze in just as the reading was going to start. It struck me as rude. Now I get it.

There is nothing more excruciating—aside from writing itself—than waiting around for people to show up to your reading.

Julianna looked minorly disgusted. This was my hometown, after all. And this was all I could draw?

“It looks like you’ll have time for dinner with your parents,” she whispered to me, as the seconds ticked past miserably.

Thankfully, the San Francisco crowd was merely tardy. Pretty soon, my twin brother, Mike, showed up with a few friends. Then my aunt Alice. Then a couple of Julianna groupies. And pretty soon we had a respectable little gathering.

My mother was the first person to ask a question (of course), but the most awkward moment came when Mike raised his hand.

“I’m not sure how I feel about being replaced as a twin,” he said.

Julianna regarded him with a slightly forced expression of mirth. “I can assure you,” she said, “that I have no intention of replacing you. No, Steve is all yours. Do with him what you will.”

She and my mother laughed uproariously.

I arrived at the LitPac reading in time to see Aimee Bender and Pam Houston rock the house and even got to share a quick sandwich with my parents, both of whom were thoroughly, annoyingly, inextricably charmed by Julianna.

I don’t think they would have been quite so charmed, though, if they had seen Julianna in action the next morning, at the airport.

Have I mentioned that Julianna is an impatient person?

Have I mentioned that she doesn’t like lines of any kind?

Well she doesn’t.

And may God have mercy on any fellow passenger who tries to cut in line if she is around.

I certainly hope that God will have mercy on the elderly Chinese couple who—looking pretty disoriented, frankly—attempted to slip past Julianna, to the front of the line.

“Oh no you don’t,” she bellowed. “This is the line. Right here. You have to go to the back of the line. Yeah, you. I’m talking to you.”

I realize you think I’m exaggerating for effect.

I am not.

All this, of course, makes me grateful that my mother didn’t say anything offensive to my coauthor.

A writer of my emotional delicacy can only handle so much conflict.

Hasta la Portland,
Steve

•••

I was looking forward to the San Fran reading because I was going to meet Mr. and Mrs. Almond. The originators. I was curious, too, about which Steve would show up. Would he be more respectful in front of his folks? It was hard to say.

We got to the reading early and while Steve got a jump on signing stock, I wandered down Stockton Street. A young pervie guy asked me where I’ve been all his life and, as I pull my pocket book in close to my body and questioned my choice of skirt, I thought: I’ve been in my own life, I guess.

And for some reason this doesn’t seem like such a good thing—having been so deeply in my own life. But I’ve got my head up now and I’m taking it all in. It felt good to be anonymous in a big city.

I must have looked like someone who’s got nowhere to go and who’s feeling wistful because what happened next was nothing less than a street scuffle for my soul.

The Scientologist got me first. With Mission Impossible reflexes, he handed me a ticket, a personal invitation for free personality and intelligence tests, which, according to the ticket, “have everything to do with your income, your future, your personal relationships, and your life,” to which I thought, “Duh.” Furthermore, what if I learned that I’m both stupid and a bitch. It seems like everyone should have the option of saying, “I may be stupid but at least I’m a nice person” or “I may not be nice, but I sure am smart.”

Fifteen feet away, L. Ron Hubbard’s peeps were offering free stress tests. Even though the Scientologist’s feelings were obviously hurt, I ambled over. Did I mention that I stopped at the King of Thai Noodle House for a drink? I was feeling calm, like I could ace the test. What you do is hold onto these metal tubes connected by wires to a little lie detector-like contraption. The lady asks a question, and the needles on the contraption waver and then shoot up. Turns out Almond makes me stressed. But so do a lot of things—academia, hurricanes, tree frogs. I’m a freak, basically. I need to read Dianetics (or La Dianética). In the middle of the woman’s pitch, a young Latina walked up and announced, “Jesus loves you! He died for your sins and he’s the only way you’re going to get stress-free!”

This was way out of bounds, and the Dianetics lady gave her a look that said so. The Scientologist was edging in too. He’d been holding back, you know, politely, but if they were going to throw down, they could count him in.

“Okay,” the Dianetics woman said. “That’s enough.”

But it clearly wasn’t. The girl piped up a few more times about Jesus’ abundant love for me, which was beginning to seem like borderline creepy love.

I had somewhere to be. I had Almonds to meet. I thanked everyone. Who knew my soul had such street value?

In the bookstore before the reading, I met the Almonds. They are wonderful. Steve’s father has a very gentle, almost shy manner and an easy smile. Steve’s mother is petite, gracious, and fabulously proud of her son. She has a true radiance. At the beginning of my reading, I told them that it’s an honor to read for them tonight, and I thanked them for their workmanship, how they have shaped this son of theirs with such attention and care. I pushed it, maybe a little, when I thanked them for their really intricate work—their really complicated cross-stitching on his psyche, on the Byzantine structural underpinnings of what is Steve Almond. But I joked. It was funny. We all laughed.

I want to mention that there was a hybrid Steve in San Fran—some Old Steve, some New Steve—a gas-electric version. Let’s call him Prius Steve. During the evening, I gave him my free intelligence and personality test ticket. It is, after all, a one hundred dollar value. This is the kind of thoughtfulness that keeps the tour rolling along so smoothly.

Soulfully yours,
Julianna

 

This is the fourth installment in a series of Postcards written by Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott, coauthors of Which Brings Me to You (Algonquin Books, 2006), while on tour to promote their book.

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 1: Postcard From Boston
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 2: Postcard From New York City
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 3: Postcard From Los Angeles
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 5: Postcard From Portland, Oregon
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 6: Postcard From Seattle

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 5: Postcard From Portland, Oregon

by

Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott

5.24.06

Online Only

Why is Portland, Oregon, my favorite city in which to read? Let me count the ways.

1. It has the single greatest bookstore on earth. (That would be Powell’s).

2. It is the most literary city in America, as evidenced by the massive turnout at the Wordstock literary festival, where I read a couple of weeks ago.

3. People not related to me actually show up to my readings.

4. And not just nonrelatives mind you, but quality fans. The chief example I would cite here is a woman named Viva Las Vegas, who attended a reading of mine several years ago, then invited me to see her perform later that night. Viva was (and is, so far as I know) a stripper.

So my mood was good as we landed in Portland. Julianna and I had been on the road for five straight days. We had traveled four thousand miles. My suitcase contained thirteen bottles of free hotel shampoo. I had exactly one clean pair of boxer shorts left.

While Julianna was dropped off at the hotel, I proceeded to Lincoln High School, where I had agreed (for reasons that now elude me) to speak to a class of eleventh-graders.

I had forgotten just how miserable junior year in high school could be, but the sight of these faces—pocked with acne and skepticism—brought it all back.

It was pretty much a disaster, the kind of disaster that results from a tired writer trying to be hip for a bunch of surly teenagers. I’m not sure they entirely understood why I was there. Then the kicker: At the end of class, one of the only kids who asked questions came up to me and inquired, with great seriousness, if I would like to worship with him at his church.

“I’m a Jew,” I said.

“That’s okay,” he said, beatifically.

“I’m an atheist,” I said.

“I don’t mind.”

So now I’m invited to worship at the Portland Church of Christ.

I returned to the hotel, which was called the Heathman and featured a doorman in Beefeater costume, for whom I felt a sort of thermonuclear pity.

I lay on my bed and tried to clear my head of the miseries of adolescence and fell into a deep sleep, which was interrupted by the sound of my cell phone alerting me to a new message.

It was Julianna. She was speaking in agitated tones.

“I’m standing alone in a room with five thousand shrimp—there’s oysters, crab, they’ve got hot appetizers plus free cosmos, wine, beer, whatever you want plus the dessert room, the cheese, a stinky cheese room, and hot stuff, you’ve got to get down here Almond, do you understand? It’s all free. Come down to the lobby, I’m alone and I’m afraid of what I might do.”

As should be clear by now, Julianna and I are not spending massive amounts of time with each other outside the context of readings. Actually, we are not spending any time with each other at all.

But this was a special circumstance, one that invoked the holiest unspoken law of the writing profession: Thou shalt alert your fellow writer to free food.

I was in the lobby within minutes. Julianna was not exaggerating. The hotel staff had laid out a feast of Roman proportions. It was a promotional gambit, an annual “client appreciation buffet” laid out to show influential members of the Portland community just how extravagant a spread the Heathman could lay out.

I found Julianna in front of the raw bar, swilling a cosmo and staring at the mountains of oysters on the half-shell.

“I told you,” she said. “I’ve been here for half an hour, just me and entire edible population of Puget Sound.”

There is no need to detail what happened next. Anyone who is a writer—or starving artist of any kind—knows the scenario.

I do feel I should mention the revulsion we both felt upon entering what we dubbed the “Lord of the Flies” banquet room, which contained a whole suckling pig, head and tail included.

That was about as much American superabundance as either one of us could take.

Still, it was nice to bond with Julianna, to spy on the various corporate types, to talk a little bit about our families, and to mock the funk calypso stylings of the band Night Train.

And this good will carried over to the reading itself, which was the best of the tour, I’d say. We had a big crowd and they laughed in all the right spots and the question-and-answer portion went swimmingly too. Powell’s had given us two separate mics, which meant we didn’t have to shove one another out of the way. So that was nice.

The only sore spot of the reading was that my old friend Claudia had come out with her darling, six-year-old daughter, Megan.

Now listen: I absolutely love when parents bring kids to readings. Really, I do. Given the declining rates of literacy in this country, it’s just about the most inspiring vision I can imagine.

The problem is that there’s not a lot in Which Brings Me to You that could be considered kid appropriate. In fact, within the chapters I wrote, there’s almost nothing.

And so I had to turn to Claudia in front of the entire crowd and explain to her that she might maybe-if-it-was-alright want to have Megan spend the next half hour in the kid’s section of the bookstore.

Megan looked at her mother, her mother whispered something, and Megan fled the room, while the rest of the crowd went “Awwwww.”

I felt like a bad man. I am a bad man.

And yet, at the same time, Claudia had read the book. She had to have known that six-year-olds are not my core demographic.

As for the rest of the crowd, they might have felt bad for the kid, but they were also horndogs of the first order (one more thing to love about Portland) and were happy enough to hear the rude bits.

After the reading, we signed a shitload of books and Julianna headed off with her brother-in-law, who, not to insult him, but was too cheap to buy the book.

Then it was off for some late-night pizza and beers with some Portland writer pals of mine, and we had a jolly old time drinking in moderation and gossiping flagrantly and, toward midnight, heading to the famous Voodoo Donuts, a donut shop so supremely weird and cool that it makes Dunkin Donuts look like a hospital cafeteria.

I crashed hard that night, in the full knowledge that we had just one more city to go. Seattle, that caffeinated, soggy, hipster destination.

Here’s hoping our last stop comes with cream and two sugars,
Steve

•••

I feel like I should briefly note our travel demeanor thus far.

Steve and I do not sit near each other at the gate before boarding.

We do not sit next to each other on the plane.

Almond sometimes offers me food from his seemingly endless travel supply.

Sometimes I accept a bonbon or a yogurt—even if I’m not hungry—just to help maintain good will.

Steve and I often do talk in the cab rides to the airport—an ongoing discussion of the definition of narcissism, which he seems to think he knows a lot about because his parents are both psychotherapists, but about which I have much to say, surprisingly. When our narcissism debate fails, we sometimes talk about ourselves. Or, as is often the case, Steve talks to real estate agents on his cell phone—which has an ear piece and dangling wires and makes him seem like he’s just speaking loudly and irately to his own reflection in the cab window. Sometimes I wonder if there maybe isn’t anyone on the other line at all, and Steve’s just kind of losing it. (Anyone who’s read Steve’s very public and quite dark opinions on literary agents won’t find it surprising that he also has issues with real estate agents. Buying this house, his first, may just put him over the edge.)

These Postcards have become ammo. When I comment on the two-day-old Indian food left-overs that Steve’s still hauling, he says, “Go ahead. Put it in the Postcard.” When we’re running late to a flight and I bark at an elderly Asian couple trying to butt in line, I know where it’s headed. The Postcards are a good thing. They help to keep us in check.

The minimal interaction and meager attempts at manners and restraint are small but important choices that make it possible for us to continue on—uninjured.

In Portland, however, our spirits are high. We are thrice charmed and—should I jinx it?—almost getting along.

Charm A. Steve starts the day all flustered about Condoleeza Rice. Evidently, Boston College, where Almond has been an adjunct professor for the past five years, has invited Ms. Rice to be their commencement speaker. He’s saying things like, “I can’t work at an institution that celebrates war criminals.”

I suggest an open letter to the Boston Globe—like Sharon Olds’s letter declining an invitation from Laura Bush. I suggest an open letter of public resignation. Steve loves the idea.

This may not seem like a charm, but trust me, it is. Steve loves to be outraged. He loves the ire. It lends him his joie de vivre, his je ne sais quoi, his essential Almond center. He’s thankful for the suggestion.

Charm B. It’s Customer Appreciation Day at the Heathman Hotel. At 4:30 P.M. I find myself alone in a banquet room stacked with seafood—I mean to tell you there are tongs in a bin of crab, piles of muscles and clams, and mounds of shrimp on ice. There’s another room devoted to pastries, another just for stinky cheeses, another for meaty things—including an entire pig, snout to tail. There are drinks everywhere and a banquet table of cosmopolitans that seems to stretch as far as the eye can see.

I call Steve on the phone. I explain the free decadence in an urgent whisper. I tell him to get down here pronto.

Moments later, holding my cosmopolitans (I’ve taken two just in case a crowd suddenly descends), hunched over a platter of a little bit of everything—the brie is liquid, did I mention this? You just pour it over the bread—Steve rounds a corner, wide-eyed and breathless. We eat until we can’t eat anymore. It’s a glimpse of the open buffet that must exist in heaven. I’m ebullient enough to ignore Steve pocketing oranges from the display. This is a bonding experience.

Charm C. Steve calls my brother-in-law a cheapskate. I’ve wanted to do this for years. The guy comes to my readings and has never bought a book. Not a one. He was an English major at Princeton where he learned one sole skill, as far as I can tell: how to work the words “English major at Princeton” into every conversation. Steve calls him a cheapskate, says, “Nice family you married into,” jokingly, after the reading. And for this I will be eternally grateful.

In a food coma,
Julianna

 

This is the fifth installment in a series of Postcards written by Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott, coauthors of Which Brings Me to You (Algonquin Books, 2006), while on tour to promote their book.

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 1: Postcard From Boston
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 2: Postcard From New York City
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 3: Postcard From Los Angeles
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 4: Postcard From San Francisco
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 6: Postcard From Seattle

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 6: Postcard From Seattle

by

Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott

5.26.06

Online Only

Another day, another strange encounter in an airport. This one with Charles D’Ambrosio, who wound up on the same flight as ours from Portland to Seattle.

My wife had just seen D’Ambrosio read and had lent me his story collection, the most excellent Dead Fish Museum. Thus I was able to tell him—without even resorting to fibbing—that I was reading his book and enjoying the hell out of it, though his stories aren’t exactly of the laugh-riot variety. (They are more of the breakdown-and-sob-at-the-lovely-hopelessness-of-it-all variety.)

They had seated us all in the same row, with D’Ambrosio next to Julianna. He politely offered to trade seats with me, an offer that both my coauthor and I immediately deemed unnecessary, unwanted, and ill-advised.

I don’t mean to imply here that Julianna and I were sick of each other. Indeed, there is no need to imply. As D’Ambrosio could see from our expressions, it was very public information at this point.

A word in our own defense: It is not easy to spend six straight days traveling with another person, let alone another writer, let alone a coauthor with whom you have had some of the nastiest verbal brawls in literary history.

And yet, as we arrived in Seattle and grabbed a cab to our radio interview at KOUW, I felt a surge of camaraderie. I watched Julianna rooting around in her bag for her cell phone and felt that I might even miss her—or at least the memory of her abusing elderly Chinese travelers.

This feeling did not last long. In fact, I can tell you the precise moment it ended. It was about five minutes into our interview, when Julianna’s cell phone began ringing. So this was bad. Live radio. The sound of a cell phone. Bad.

But what made it especially mortifying was that Julianna didn’t seem to know what to do. Six days on the road with me had somewhat dulled her reaction time. And thus her phone rang four times—clearly audible to the listening audience—before she could turn it off. Then it issued a final ring a minute later to alert her to the arrival of a new message.

Now, I know a lot of coauthors who, in this situation, would have gotten upset and possibly even confiscated the cell phone in question. But I am a gentle man by disposition, and more than a little frightened of Julianna, and thus, I kept my mouth shut.

Besides, this was our last night! Why bicker over something petty like being made a fool of on the radio? It happens to me all the time.

Instead, I took a cab back to the hotel, driven by a nice fellow named Ahmed who, in addition to displaying a dazzling disregard for Seattle’s vehicular laws, informed me that he was a writer.

“I have been working on a book about my experiences in this country for eight years. I drive around and all the time I’m thinking about how I want it to go. The problem is getting them from here,” he said, tapping his forehead, “onto the piece of paper.”

I tried to say something sympathetic, but all I could think of was: “Yes, it really is hard, Ahmed. Fortunately, I know a truly excellent novelist who would be willing to tutor you for as long as you need—for free.”

Again, I kid.

I would never think to subject Ahmed to Julianna’s abuse.

From the hotel, I headed over to see my pals Clay and Robin and their insanely cute one-year-old hellion, George.

Then it was straight to the University Bookstore for our closing performance, which was, if I may say so, the best of the whole tour.

It wasn’t just that we chose good passages to read and answered the questions well. It was that we both had a great time.

All joking aside: I know that the tour was tough for Julianna. Even though she didn’t say this to me outright, I could tell that she missed her family quite a bit. It’s impossible for me to understand how hard the tour must have been for her, given that I got to see my spouse and that I don’t yet have kids to miss.

And if it means anything, I’m incredibly proud of how well she read, how sharp and funny she was, not to mention how lightly she packed. Of course, I would never say this to her face, as she would probably bite my head off for being cloying and/or condescending.

One more thing I wouldn’t say to her face: She’s a bit of a role model for me. By which I mean that I hope I’m able to be even half as productive as she’s been, while supporting my family. (Actually, upon consideration, I would settle for a third as productive.)

All of which brings me to the final scene of our little Tour-That-Sort-Of-Could-And-Did, which took place in the Seattle Airport.

Julianna was flying Continental. I was on American.

Unbeknownst to me, I would spend the next five hours trapped in the Seattle Airport because of foul weather in Chicago and would eventually have to catch a flight to Hartford, via Charlotte, thus arriving at my home outside Boston at three in the morning.

But all that comes later.

The moment I’m thinking of was one of those quiet, embarrassed times when two world-class loudmouths suddenly find themselves short on words.

“Well,” I said, “I guess this is it. Safe travels.”

“You too,” Julianna said.

“Right,” I said. I shuffled my feet a bit. “All things considered, I think things went pretty well. With the tour, I mean.”

Julianna nodded. “No broken bones, no broken egos.”

“None that I can find.” Before the moment could gather too much maudlin momentum, she added, in her best smartass tone, “Still, let’s agree to never, ever do this again.”

“Right,” I said. “Deal.”

Then we hugged and went our separate ways.

Now officially flying solo,
Steve

•••

At this point on a typical book tour, authors don’t smell so good—especially authors who are dedicated to carry-on luggage. Steve admits that he might be a little ripe. I stink of sour wine and mint shampoo, and not in a good way. Did I mention that I poured a full glass of pinot grigio on myself two cities back? Soaked down to the underwear. (Note: A padded bra can absorb a lot of alcohol.)

It turns out that I can spot an author on tour at about twenty paces. Telltale signs? The face is wearing a shocked expression, simultaneously wired and exhausted, and depending on how long he’s been on tour there’s the aforementioned odor and/or a lingering hopefulness around the eyebrows.

Waiting for the flight to Seattle at the Portland airport, I spot one. I estimate he’s on day three. His eyebrows are perked and he still looks fresh. I walk up to him and ask. I should mention that it’s one of my dreams to have someone come up to me in an airport and ask me if I’m an author. I’d prefer they recognized me from the book jacket of their favorite book instead of just picking me out of the crowd based on my facial expression, but still.

“So, are you an author on tour?” I ask. He replies, “Um, yes. How could you tell?” I should confess that I had heard this guy on his cell phone talking about “reading shorter next time” and “maybe funnier stuff” too. So I’m not exactly clairvoyant, but still and all—some credit, please. I tell him it’s written all over him.

The author turns out to be Charlie D’Ambrosio, author of the story collection Dead Fish Museum, which Steve has recently started reading and admires. I like D’Ambrosio from the get-go. He seems sincere and ironic.

It is at this moment in the terminal when I’m hit by one of the attacks—the weird attacks that have been coming and going for a few years during this collaboration with Steve. It’s this overwhelming feeling of being misunderstood.

If I had to pick one person in the entire world who might think I’m capable of, well, not evil, but some word implying bad intentions, it would be Steve Almond. I don’t quite know why the attack hits when I meet D’Ambrosio. I doubt he can tell I’m having one—the attacks have no outward symptoms, as far as I know. (Then again, damn, could I have been twitching?) This feeling is always quickly followed by a wave of homesickness—even when I’m at home. Basically, I want to be with people who know and trust me.

As if Continental Airlines can feel the current vibe between Steve and me, we are seated in a row at the back of the plane, separated by D’Ambrosio. (Steve has joked that our separate seating is an FAA regulation.)

While Steve hammers away at his open letter-resignation for the Boston Globe, D’Ambrosio and I spend the hour in full commiseration mode. I’m missing my family terribly, but restrain myself from going into details about all that I’ve been absent from: my daughter’s bicycle-powered ice-cream churner, my oldest son’s first big stage appearance, my youngest son’s most recent chest-trap give-and-go soccer goal. My husband and I are usually inseparable. I miss how hard we make each other laugh. I miss how we can’t stop talking to each other even when we’re brushing our teeth. Not each other’s teeth—we talk to each other while we’re each brushing our own teeth—we aren’t that inseparable. I miss how as soon as we hug in the kitchen one of our kids comes between us to bust it up like a chaperone at a school dance.

I tell D’Ambrosio that I’m a little stunned to find myself on a book tour. I signed onto a job of solitude and coffee and imagination. How did we end up traveling salesmen? Are we suited to this? Are we selling actual books to people other than our family members (minus my brother-in-law)? D’Ambrosio is on his way to a country music station for an interview. Do they think his book is about fishing? We’re baffled, but, for a moment, we’re happy to be baffled together.

Seattle. The final foofaraw. It’s the sixth city on the tour and it’s like Steve and I finally get it. There are many levels of bullshit to our relationship, but it seems like we’ve both gotten out of the bullshit elevator on the same floor this time.

At the University Bookstore reading, I don’t foul up my words like I did in Portland, where I told the crowd that Steve and I had eaten dozens of pinafores. After some confused looks from the audience, I finally realized pinafores are little jumper dresses. Of course, I meant to say petits fours, the delicious pastry—not to be confused with petticoats.

Steve does it all just right in Seattle too. Playing to his natural interests, he reads only the dirty sections of the book. And the question-and-answer portion is perfecto.

There’s plenty of love and hate in our relationship, and when we err, we err on the side of hate—naturally and rightly so. But for all my blather, do I really hate or even really dislike Steve Almond? Of course not. He’s a man of conviction. He’s passionate about literature and music and politics. He’s a brilliant writer. I also think he’ll make a wonderful father come September.

But I’m thinking about a line in the novel—one of Jane’s lines. “When I’m with you, will I be closer to the person I want to be?” I have to admit that I don’t like the character of Julianna Baggott in Steve Almond’s world. I don’t recognize her. I don’t really want to know her. And after an investment of three years in this collaboration, that’s a pretty tough realization to walk away with. I guess I’d prefer to have put some good in the world—not bookishly, but personally—and I’m afraid I’ve failed.

The next morning, when we get to the Seattle airport, the cab pulls up behind a truck labeled Bomb Disposal Unit. Steve, the cabbie, and I look on with some nervous laughter as it pulls away. Are we to believe it’s hauling off some dismantled bomb that will be disposed of later? This seems like an apt metaphor. There has been no explosion on this book tour either. We’ve made our way through it without blowing each other to smithereens.

I follow Steve into the airport. I’ll remember him this way—talking to his real estate lawyer on his cell phone’s ear piece while walking to the ticket counter, carrying his old-fashion, wheel-less, buckled suitcase, which is crammed with pilfered hotel toiletries.

We give each other a hug that seems congratulatory and then turn in opposite directions. No backward glance, no final wave. It strikes me as a little sad the way we both set off so quickly into the bustle of strangers.

On my way home,
Julianna

 

This is the sixth and final installment in a series of
Postcards written by Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott, coauthors of Which Brings Me to You (Algonquin Books, 2006), while on tour to promote their book.

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 1: Postcard From Boston
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 2: Postcard From New York City
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 3: Postcard From Los Angeles
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 4: Postcard From San Francisco
Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour, Part 5: Postcard From Portland, Oregon

Authors on Reviews: A First-Timer Reveals How It Feels

by

Steve Almond

May/June 2003
5.1.03

In Print and Online

Last April (the 22nd, to be exact), I received an advance copy of the New York Times review of my debut story collection. The piece, which appeared in the Sunday Book Review, began as follows: “There’s a postadolescent period many of us would rather forget: that summer or decade when we have no idea what we’re doing. Days are measured in beer, TV and dead-end jobs. It is a dull time to live through, and duller still to read about. “Which doesn’t stop young writers from writing about it.”

The critic, Claire Dederer, went on to characterize my book as a “mopey, navel-gazing collection” full of “confused laddies.”

You can include me in that list of laddies, actually, because none of the characters in my book—which include a 70-year-old widower, a 33-year-old female reporter, a middle-aged librarian, and a pair of gay soldiers—drink beer or watch TV or have dead-end jobs. None of them mope or navel-gaze. What they do, and quite vigorously, is have sex and suffer heartbreak.

My friends and relatives who read this review were quick to remind me that I was lucky to get reviewed in the Times at all, that there is no such thing as bad press, that the review did say some nice things. In short, they carted out all available bromides, none of which did squat to soothe my wounded heart.

I have since calmed down considerably. But I would still rank getting a bad review as the worst, most bruising part of putting a book into the world—with no close second.

I know how terribly unfashionable this sounds. Years from now, no doubt, I’ll look back upon this confession and wince. To admit that reviews matter is considered poor form among writers. We’re supposed to rise above the fray, let our words be our sole defense, blah blah blah. But that’s how I feel. And I know, from speaking to dozens of other writers, that most of them feel the same way, though they struggle not to let this show. And, what’s more—we’ve got every right to feel this way.

While writers may be habituated to rejection—I happen to eat the stuff for breakfast—a nasty review isn’t just a rejection of your work. It’s a public repudiation. You open the paper (perhaps in your very own town) to find that someone, some stranger, has deemed your work lousy. Your mother reads this. She weeps. Quietly. To herself. And then she calls you and says, “…Well, honey, the review did say some nice things.”

There’s no appeals process. No way to defend yourself in the court of public opinion, nor to question the critic’s qualifications. Whatever they say, you eat. Period.

Of course, if you happen to be named Clancy or King, or even Updike, a bad review doesn’t matter so much, because you’ve already got an established audience. But for most writers, the plain cold fact is that critics determine how your work is regarded by most of the world. Consider the math: Tens of thousands of people read the reviews in major newspapers. Only a fraction of that number ever read the books being reviewed.

If anything, writers suffer bad reviews more deeply than other artists. We can’t blame the director of photography for ruining our vision, or the producer for mixing the guitars all wrong. Nor can we expect a surge in album sales or a huge weekend gross to rescue us.

As bitter as I may sound (and I’m aware that I’m verging on bitter here), I should make clear that I am not questioning the critical mission. I teach a college course in which I stress, over and over, that criticism is essential to the production of art. Indeed, the best critics are motivated by a profound love of art. They hold us to a higher standard of achievement by articulating the ways in which we have fallen down on the job.

I was incredibly grateful to the critics who took my work this seriously. One reviewer noted that my emphasis on romantic woe became wearying after a time. Another pointed out my tendency to become didactic at the end of the stories. Dederer herself suggested that I wrote best about sex when I embedded it in a specific context. I thought these were all terrific points.

But, of the 50 or so reviews I received, only a handful offered this kind of pointed critique. Most of the rest were simply too short to do anything more than provide a pithy opening, a little plot summary, a quote or two, and an incisive final graph.

In defense of these critics, much of the problem is institutional. The standard book review these days runs about 400 words. Critics are often asked to write under intense time pressure, and for too little money.

There are also the demands of the market to consider, meaning that reviewers must often try to come up with some catchy angle.

Taylor Antrim, for instance, writing for the Village Voice Literary Supplement, portrayed me as one of a posse of “Young, Gifted, & Workshopped” writers who had committed the unpardonable sin of having attended an MFA program.

I e-mailed Antrim to thank him for the piece, but also noted that I would have liked to have seen him discuss my writing without regard to my educational background.

He replied: “Of course you’re right. I’m not entirely comfortable with the MFA angle to the piece, though that’s unfortunately the hook that grabs an editor at the VLS for a freelance piece. As in ‘Yeah, yeah, MFA—that’s zeitgeisty and controversial! Do that!’”

I cannot express how sad I found this note. Not just Antrim’s softheaded pandering, but the idea that books, in and of themselves, are unworthy of critical attention without a hook. There are, of course, still venues that run book reviews without a hook. But they’ve become the exception, at this point, not the rule. Even those critics whose sole focus was ostensibly my book were often writing about something else: themselves.

R.V. Scheide, who wrote a review for a weekly paper in Sacramento, is a pointed example. What struck me as most peculiar about this review was the last line: “One walks away from My Life in Heavy Metal thinking Steve Almond is not a happy man.”

Clearly, Scheide had confused me (the author) with my characters. It’s a common mistake amongst my students. But then, they’re newcomers to fiction—not critics.

I met Scheide before my reading in Sacramento. It took him about five minutes of sheepish mumbling before he admitted, without prompting, that he had recently gone through a divorce and that he was still pretty bummed out. “I guess I was maybe writing about myself,” he said.

Yeah, I guess.

The best critics—the most self-aware, I should say—acknowledge the ways in which a particular book has affected them. But there are plenty, I’m sad to report, who just sort of blast away.

I remember this from my own days as a music critic. My rule of thumb back then was simple: Shoot first, ask questions later. It shocks me now to think of all the authority I was given—I, who had never played an instrument seriously, who knew next to nothing about music. I had been handed a license without having had to take a single exam.

But then, this is one of the perverse pleasures of being a critic: the right to sit in judgment without ever having to subject oneself to critical review.

And it’s not just a matter of throwing around opinions. No, critics can write just about anything without being subjected to the scrutiny of fact-checkers or editors. Perhaps the strangest example I encountered involved a critic named Ann M. Bauer. Bauer objected to—among other things—the fact that one of my female characters ejaculated a considerable amount of fluid during sex. This she called a “woefully inaccurate rendering of the female anatomy.”

I won’t dwell on this point, except to say that it aptly demonstrates a danger of sloppy criticism: Opinions are asserted as facts. As it happens, certain women do ejaculate in this way, a fact substantiated by at least two letters to the editor from women.

Often, in dealing with particularly nasty reviews, I couldn’t help but think of the short story “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff, which captures the tragedy of being a professional critic. “Anders did not remember when he began to regard the heap of books on his desk with boredom and dread,” Wolff writes, “or when he grew angry at writers for writing them.”

The best reviews I received, fittingly, came from fellow fiction writers. They were the ones who focused most sharply on the emotional lives of my characters, who seemed to grasp that I was writing about sex as a means of exploring heartbreak. There was also a measure of respect in these reviews, which I attribute to the fact that writers realize how hard it is to produce a publishable manuscript.

But I may have lucked out on this front. Because relatively recently, we’ve been treated to several hatchet jobs perpetrated by established writers. Colson Whitehead’s defrocking of Richard Ford’s new story collection in the New York Times Book Review comes to mind, as does Dale Peck’s 5,500-word rant against Rick Moody in the New Republic.

Editors run these pieces, in part, because they believe them to have literary merit. But there is a second, more obvious motive: to generate buzz. And this they do. In the days after these pieces appeared, half a dozen friends urged me to read them. It was like being back on the playground when that sudden magical murmur begins: Fight! Fight! I felt dragged toward the brawl by my own worst impulses.

Writers have every right to criticize other writers, of course; I don’t mean to suggest that we should all join hands and sing “Kumbaya.” But I’m still not sure what purpose is served by the tone of these assaults. Peck’s piece is particularly vicious. He stops just short of calling Moody an idiot—and that effort seems to pain him.

I can understand Peck’s basic argument (because he makes it over and over): Moody’s prose is imprecise and his ideas are murky. I can even commend his passion as a critic. But is it really necessary to tear down another writer in order to defend your own aesthetic? Does disapproval require such flamboyant malice?

The world of letters is already under assault, after all, from TV, movies, the Internet, from the drone and shine of those media intended to replace people’s internal lives with frantic buy messages. It seems to me essential that writers work to promote their common goal, which is the articulation of what it means to be human. This is not the historical moment to broadcast your disgust with another writer’s prose.

But okay, even if we go along with the standard rationalization—that Ford and Moody are big names, that consumers should know what they’re getting before they plunk down their cash—how does one explain the critics who choose to savage books by obscure writers, books (in other words) that nobody is going to buy anyway? Why knock down a writer who has yet to rise into the public eye?

Why not, instead, find a book that the critic can champion?

I’m sure this sounds terribly naïve. But that’s why I became an artist: I wanted permission to sound naïve and hopeful.

So I’m going to pretend, just for the moment, that there are a few critics out there listening to this mawkish little jeremiad. To them, let me say the following: Please resist the impulse to dole our your next righteous mugging. Find, instead—just this once—a piece of art that you love, that speaks to your heart, and write a review that helps carve out a place in the world for it.

Steve Almond is the author of My Life in Heavy Metal (Grove Press, 2002), which will be published in paperback this month.

 

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Date:
  • June 10, 2019
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