bookfraud

Sometimes you write what you know, even if you don’t know you’re writing it.

Let’s start at home. My mother has arrived this week for a visit, the first time she’s made a trip to see Wife and I since my father died.

As a result, there’s been a veritable beehive of activity at the Bookfraud household, most of which has consisted of cleaning the World’s Dirtiest, Nastiest Windows (step up and see ‘em — 25 cents a look!). Suffice it to say that it took a screwdriver to scrape out all the dirt underneath my fingernails.

In addition to the cleaning duties (another great excuse not to blog!) I’ve been wondering how, if somebody put an Uzi to my head, I would write such a homecoming. My father had made it up here only a couple of times, and none since Wife and I moved into our swinging apartment five years ago. As a setup for a story, the situation is rife with possibilities. Mostly bad ones.

Melodrama would be the easiest path to follow; however,instead of recriminations and over-the-top wailing like in a soap opera, I would probably would spin something about a writer complaining to his mother about the sorry state of his writing career, a mother who says how great the writer is, and don’t worry, etc. (Pitiful, in every sense of the word).

We are family

This gets to the Theme for my modest post, which is writers who mine their families’ for fodder. Writers who have taken their family members and based characters on them — or just written about them while they still trod the earth — are as common as rudeness or bedbugs.

Kathyrn Harrison’s “The Kiss” is par exemplar of such writing. It’s about her sexual affair with her father. You heard that right! She banged her father — when she was an adult! — and wrote a best-selling memoir about it.

The more I think about this, the more I want to take a shower in extremely hot water. Though I don’t know if Harrison’s father is still alive, she does have children, and the possibilities for playground taunting are as endless as they are cruel.

Why write such a book? I don’t know, except to say the taboo it addressed was sensational enough to sell enough books to fill two dozen U-Hauls.

The general defense of such exploitation is that honesty is the only manner in which art can be created, and if she slept with her father, she has every right — no, an obligation — to share it in print with the rest of the world.

Well, if you ever wanted an example of “failing the imagination,” that’s it. Or “writing what you know.” Or narcissism on the grandest scale.

You’ve probably gathered that I am loathe to chronicle family experiences as fodder for fiction. Unfortunately, I’m as guilty of it as anyone, though not consciously, and not to talk about my family’s deepest, darkest secrets, which, I promise you, do not include incest.

To wit, my unpublished novel. On the surface, the protagonist’s family has little to do with mine other than geography, religion, and the size of the family. The parents do different jobs, the children have wildly different grandparents, and the siblings are about as true to mine as wire-haired schnauzers are to pit bulls.

But that’s just on the surface. Upon closer reflection, the father resembles mine in some respects, in terms of temperment and speech, and the mother, if she does not look or behave like mine, at least shares some familiar interests and ideas about motherhood.

Major yuk

All this talk about Daddies and sex and such is so grossing me out, in fact, that I would rather clean the apartment than write any more about it, except to wonder: how the hell did I end up writing about this?

I guess I’ll be back to writing more than once a week. Before 2007.

I had initially titled this posting “I Suck,” but it is such an obvious fact to that there’s really no reason in reiterating it in lights.

Self-loathing is the cheapest trick in the writer’s bag of rhetoric, but it is also part-and-parcel of an artistic temperament. Those who write or paint or compose and have the facade of supreme confidence are to be avoided at all costs.

You know the type. They’ve got the novel published. They’ve gotten the great reviews. They’ve got money, fame, and literary esteem. But they hate themselves.

It’s not just that such folk are Holden Caulfield phonies, but I daresay that a suicide attempt has rained on their past, or soon will. A hyper-confident facade is overcompensation, and for all the psycho-babble in our culture about self-esteem, it may not do well for writers. If you had perfect self-esteem, you would believe that you were incapable of doing wrong. You know, like the Nazis or George Bush. Not that I’m comparing the two.

Though they may have their own pools of self-doubt, however, most the successful artists I know don’t hate themselves. But I do. At least on October 18, 2006.

Avoid phonies — in any language

You see, there’s a reason why I’m not looking at other blogs or posting on my own save for the most lengthy of intervals. My stories are getting turned down. My novel rewrite is on the road to nowhere. I see rejection everywhere I look.

As this translates itself to the art of fiction, every word becomes leaden, every session at the computer is exquisite torture. I haven’t put up any blog posts lately because every time I start writing one, it gets deleted after a couple of pained, strained, drained, maimed, lame, tamed sentences filled with ridiculous adjectives.

My writing feels like an amalgam of juvenile poetry and adult schlock.

This hasn’t been helped by certain problems at work, which have put me into a deep funk for reasons you don’t need to know, except a certain individual is making me miserable.

Of late, certain developments in my life should, on the surface, make me very happy. And the course of my existence is good, by all possible measures. But there’s one area in which I feel inadequate, and that is in the written word.

It’s funny how one can be humming right along, and then a harmonic convergence blows one’s confidence to shreds. To wit: I get a rejection letter, I sulk, I’ll watch football on TV, then feel guilty about not writing, try to write, give it up, and watch football on TV. It’s like being roasted on one of those sterno weenie burners.

One thing I’ve noticed is that I’m not reading a book that is making me want to write. I’ve just started Christopher Isherwood two-novel set of “The Berlin Stories,” as I figure since I have seen the musical and the movie, I might as well be familiar with the source material. The book is interesting for its anachronistic tone and writing, but so far, Mr. Isherwood, I’m Just Not That Into You. (But we’ll go out on a couple of more dates.)

See the movie, read the book

Is there anyone I hate more than myself? Let’s consider the possibilities:

Bookfraud: inability to publish stories, massive tolerance for abuse.

Donald Rumsfeld: Satan’s lawyer.

Well, there’s three for you.

I have to stop writing. I just hate it too much.

For those of us who follow such things, the recent death of New York Times reporter, editor, gourmand, oenophile, and expense-account abuser R.W. Apple marked the end of an era. I can’t say what era that might be — perhaps the Protozoan Era, given Apple’s long history with the newspaper — but he was one of the last old-time lions of political reportage that pre-dated the Internet, e-mail, and, of course, blogs, which usually have no reporting in them but lots of half-assed, ill-informed commentary, just like mine.

Apple’s coverage of the Vietnam War and of politics are legendary in journalistic circles, but just as legendary were Apple’s appetites. He knew the best restaurants in every town, where to get the right vintages in Osaka, and the best room in the best hotel of every city. Apple ate fois gras by the pound and vineyards were like second homes.

Now, I don’t drink much wine, especially since the red stuff gives me headaches of the pneumatic variety, in which the pain can be measured in pressure per inch. Beer is a different story, and since last holiday season, when I scored a Mr. Beer home brewing kit, I have been semi-obsessed with beer-making, to the point I have actually made two entire batches over the course of nine months! That must be a record for sustaining an outside interest.

The fact is, I don’t really have any hobbies. I mean, I read, I do sudoku, I’ll watch television, go to movies and museums, but the bulk of my free time is spent at the keyboard. Writing has become my hobby, though I always dreamed writing fiction would be my profession and I’d have time to take up piano, educate my palate, learn French, or spend all my free time playing video games while Wife cooks and cleans. (Some dreams will never come true).

Apple at work

Do writers even have hobbies, besides drinking and raging on blogs? Does Toni Morrison garden, does Michel Houellebecq whip up a mean coc au vin?

Flannery O’Connor advised young writers to take up drawing, as it forces one to observe an object for an extended time. Not only will you be able to draw a passable still life, but you will be able to interpret it, such as figuring out the talking bannana like the ones I have in dreams.

Here’s the rub: I can’t pay attention for more than a few days on any given hobby. I tried to learn French. I tried to learn the harmonica. I tried to build a combat robot. Every time, I would lose interest in the time it took you to read this sentence.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like learning a new skill, or that my lousy abilities proved so frustrating that I quit like an eight-year-old, such as I did with a power tool a few weeks ago that was tossed clean across my mother’s driveway.

No, my reticence was due to another factor: spending time with hobbies took away from my time to write. Every spent away from the keyboard doing something for its pure enjoyment became a neurotic spiral from which there was no escape: I haven’t written all day because I’m learning how to kayak. I got to get back! I gotta write — otherwise, failure! Noooooooooooo!!

Mr. Beer — oh yeah

For those of you who have full-time jobs and write on the side, do you have well-developed hobbies? Do you spend your free time enjoying life? Do you have friends? Do you sleep 3 hours a night of your own choice?

Maybe you don’t do stuff like commute, eat, or waste time on the shitter. Perhaps you are one of those genetic freaks who would rather sit down and scribble away rather than, say, watch television, freeing up other time for hobbies and such.

Those with little ones don’t count. I know how busy you are. I know. Quit reminding me. I know who you are.

Admittedly, I am a dinosaur, and few incidents illustrate this more than the following.

On the morning of Nov. 3, 2004, I arose after a night of fitful and miserable sleep. There was nothing that could help, nothing that could relief the burning malaise — no, make that fury — in my soul.

I went to work as always, newspaper in one hand, iPod in the other. I wore a dress shirt, slacks, my usual gnarly shoes and twelve-year-old set of undergarments. But there was once difference. Instead of the Beatles, the Stones, or the Starland Vocal Band, the only tunage I could stomach that morning eminated from those San Francisco punks, The Dead Kennedys.

Specifically, one song in particular, the greatest song ever written about Republicans, “We’ve Got a Bigger Problem Now.” Dated in its mid-80s references, the song had special import that morning:

Last call for alcohol
Last call for your freedom of speech
Drink up — Happy Hour is now enforced by law…

The song moves from a lounge singer parody into a punk frenzy:

Die on our brand new poison gas!
El Salvador or Afghanistan
Making money for President Reagan
Making money for President Reagan
And all the friends of President Reagan!

California Uber Alles
California Uber Alles
Uber Alles California
Uber Alles California

Perhaps you need to actually hear it to understand. Still, on the morning after President Bush was re-elected to office, the DKs was the only thing that could soothe my tired, angered self.

The DKs first two releases, the EP (remember those?) “In God We Trust Inc.” and “Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables,” comprised a manic cri de coeur, slamming greedy Republicans, hateful Moral Majority members, evil plutocrats, Nazi punks, stupid adults…you get the idea.

The DKs railed against the closed-mindedness, political apathy, and general ignorance of the nation. You might be able to fool all of the people some of the time, but that’s enough to allow democracy to crumble; and, after our great nation elected to its highest office a draft dodger and war criminal over a war hero, they were the perfect vehicle for my unlimted anger.

Me so angry

This extended reflection on a now-defunct punk band is not intended to be a rallying cry to fight the evils the DKs dispised (though, given the state of our the United States, it should be). It’s more to show that the only music that gave me solice on that awful morning was over 20 years old.

Is it that there hasn’t been music as corrosive since the DKs, or have I become a dinosaur, listening to ancient and defunct rock bands, watching black-and-white movies, and, most disturbingly, reading novels by dead white people?

Wife has commented to me that I have an “old soul,” usually because the only concerts I attend anymore involve a conductor, a spate of violins, and an average audience age of 74.2 years. But as a writer, I’ve always neglected following the latest and greatest, trying to keep up with whatever Important Astonishing New Talent is shooting across the atmosphere.

Zadie Smith, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nell Freudenberger, et. al. have one thing in common: I haven’t read any of their work. Wife bought me Gary Shteyngart’s “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook,” and I still haven’t cracked it open (though she read it and reported on its OK-ness).

I’m drawn to Hardy, Dickens, Brontë(s) and the like. Even among the living, I’ll read relatively old fucks like Philip Roth or Margaret Atwood. Mick Jagger said not to trust anyone over 30 (an age he passed, like, 120 years ago) but I don’t trust any writers under 30.

Is it that the classics or the old-reliables are just that much better than contemporary fiction by writers young enough to get kicked out of bars?

Or is it that my blood starts boiling like vats of hot oil when I see all the fame, fortune, and recognition these talented (I admit) young writers are getting while I stew and fume, discharging my anger on blogs lest my brain explodes like one of the dudes in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”?

It’s obviously a combination of these two things. When I pick up “Return of the Native,” I’m pretty much assured a great read — after all, it’s a classic, baaaaaby! — but I don’t have to worry about the specter of Thomas Hardy appearing in Poets & Writers or in the NYT Book Review.

Little Mister Sunshine

What I’ve come to realize is that being a writer is more about learning from other writers, not being jealous of them, even if they still have zits or are making $10²¹ on their next book or movie rights. Realization is easier than action, however, and it almost takes a force of willpower to read someone under 30 years old.

If you’re reading this, Jello Biafra, be glad you have 40-somethings who love the DKs. Otherwise, you’ll be as forgotten as yesterday’s Bookfraud.

Normally, I don’t put a post up just to link to another article, but this was just too awesome to resist. In an interview in The Guardian newspaper, my boy Salman Rushdie rips into John Updike as revenge for Updike’s review of “Shalimar the Clown” in the New Yorker.

The good stuff is in the second paragraph.

My favorite line is, “Somewhere in Las Vegas there’s probably a male prostitute called ‘John Updike.’” Awesome!

I need some coffee, some serious hardcore bean man, I can’t take a dump until I have some coffee, but damn, what did I drink last night I can’t remember except there was there grenadine in it or perhaps that nasty red shit you can’t drink on its own? Maybe there was some tequila involved…that’s always trouble, fucking tequila. I do the stupidest shit when I drink tequila. Some involving my penis, others involving my feet, some involving my feet and penis. What if one’s penis was shaped like a foot? Or feet like a penis? That would hurt, either.

Ah, thank you caffeine, I worship at your altar…I like to imbibe M&Ms when I drink coffee for hangovers. I don’t buy this shit that M&Ms are poison. Wait — some of the M&Ms have imprinting on them…”Sept. 30, 2006″ and “[Bride's name] & [Groom's name]“. Damn, we were at a wedding last night. Now it all makes sense. We were at a wedding last night in Aruba. Or was it Bermuda? I can’t keep those straight. Just let me have some more coffee, and I’ll remember it.

This is why I don’t write stream of consciousness in my fiction…the only thing I write is what happened to me in the past 24 hours. I had a weird dream last night, eight drinks later…I had a $10 bill but it was labeled “ELEVEN DOLLARS” and half of the “10s” were “11s” and I wonder if this dream had something to do with Spinal Tap or that I’m a counterfeiter or does anybody really care about a drunkard’s dream, and if not, why are they always found in really bad fiction?

It’s really hard to nail down stream of consciousness though if you are Irish or Really Smart you can do it, but since most of us are not Irish or not Really Smart, or at least as Really Smart as Brainiac Writers Who Could Have Been Physicists and Solved Unified Field Theory or Could Have Been Doctors and Cured Cancer.

Take away his writer’s license

But try and try we do…like robots, we think that great, profound writing is embodied in long, complicated sentences without punctuation or in italics or separated by elipses…but I’ve seen it too often, and done so amateurishly that there’s really no point in it anymore, I mean, if it were the 1920s all over again, it might mean something innovative and not lazy like I’m being today because it feels like there are a million gremlins stomping out fires on my body…

I remember trying to read Ulyssess a long time ago…I was in college, thinking I was reallysmart and my Jesuitprefabuliststreamofthinking would carry me though the text like a lifeboat on a sea of lava….but then my cantankerous talking canker cabliasian McLeary land-lord told me i love you you love me i said but why do we love my love said and

when I was in graduate school we had some lousy writers who would put a flashback within a flashback, like “I remembered when I was twelve. I was walking down the street with my friends, and then I remembered when I was four and my brother pushed me down a flight of stairs wearing a backwards san diego padres hat and I cannot go to san diego, I thought.”

but what did you write i said you cannot have a flashback in a flashback unless you’re reallytalented nobody can really get away it but she said, i can do what i want you stupid writer of stupid stories and friends said bookfraud you are a fraud and can’t you see this is so brilliant because you write stories without enough information about the male protagonist’s relationship with his girlfriend and i said what the fuck, i can’t stand this any more, if i read one more “my first period” story i’m going to throw up and you’re making this about me, you can’t do that oh yes we can oh yes yes and yes I said yes I will Yes.

man, my head hurts right now i should not have had that sixth tequila sunrise and taken the bride away from the groom during the first dance and hit the security guard in the solar plexus then hurled all over the drumkit while the bride’s two nfl-playing brothers were using my head as a mop to clean up all the vomit ohboy did i really go to this wedding or is it all a dream sequence like the end of “star wars” when yoda woke up with a couple of skanks from a 70s porn movie (or was it from a shakira video) and says, “the force was with me all night long!”

Stately, plump Bookfraud

So I try to avoid writing stream-of-consciousness, as it has become an easy shorthand for “I’m really weird” or “Look at me!” I once tried to write a story when I was in my early 20s about a fellow whose father had absconded with the family’s money and made off to Brazil, but it was even less accomplished than the writing you see above, and because I am older and I can see the past and there were these Faulknerian habitualizations of narcoleptic love fury enviromizing our fecundic polarities and I say Yes.