APPRECIATIONS
Norman Mailer and the Shape of My NoseLOS ANGELES 06 June 2009 |
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Back in the good old days, when I was a hipster kid living in New York City, I was friends with a well-known character actor named Sully Boyar. Sully appeared in numerous movies, among them Fort Apache the Bronx, with Paul Newman and Pam Grier; The Jazz Singer, with Neil Diamond and Laurence Olivier; In the Soup, with Steve Buscemi and Seymour Cassel (who, I don’t mind stating publicly, is a world-class asshole); and Car Wash, with George Carlin and Richard Pryor. The last movie on that list was 1970s Afro-cinema, and Sully played the car-wash owner, so that sometimes, when he was walking around New York, black guys would come up to say, “Didn’t I used to work for your ass?” They were sure they had.
But the star with whom Sully made more movies than any other was Al Pacino. They’d known each other since Pacino was a teenager and Sully had just stepped down from the bench (he’d once been a judge) to pursue an acting career. Twice, through Sully, I met Pacino, the first of those two times at Sully’s daughter’s wedding, where I was earning extra cash as a bartender. It was an outdoor wedding with lots of Italian guests, just like The Godfather, and at one point, as I was pouring champagne, a cry went up and I saw a swarm of Italian ladies rushing over to pinch the cheeks of Al Pacino, who’d just arrived. He was dressed like a hippie, like his character in Serpico, in a flak jacket and a yellow headband, and he had a dog with him — a dog, I remember, that had been saved from the pound and so had been named Lucky. Then Sully saved Pacino from the Italian ladies and brought him over to the bar to get him a drink. I think he had a Sprite. Whatever it was, I know it wasn’t alcoholic.
The second time I met Pacino was somewhere in the West 40s in Manhattan. Sully spotted Pacino and again introduced me, and I shook his hand. I wrenched it, in fact. I was nervous — as nervous as I’d been the first time I met him — and I released his hand, which he flapped around as if shaking off pain and said, in his very best Al Pacino voice, “Wow! This guy is powerful!”
“Yeah,” Sully said, “he’s a sheepherder.”
I was not, and never have been, a sheepherder. I grew up on a farm in the South, and, yes, we had a few sheep, but that only amounted to my having to feed them and help my dad sheer them. Oh yes, and I also had to walk out to their goddamned shed in the middle of the freezing night during lambing season to see if any lambs had been born. I hate sheep. (I was about to write “I hate fucking sheep,” but that would sound like I’ve fucked sheep, which I’m sure I would’ve hated doing if I had.)
So I was kind of mad at Sully for telling Al Pacino I was a sheepherder. Still, like me, he was nervous around Pacino, whose celebrity had increasingly come between them, and Sully was in constant need of a job and hoping Pacino would lend him a hand. He never did, and that goes for Sully’s other celebrity friends. He was always talking about how broke he was — and when Sully talked, it was hard to shut him up. He was, by his own admission, a babbler, and many people, I’m sure, avoided him for that reason.
One night I had dinner with Sully, who surprised me with an extra ticket for a play about Marilyn Monroe. The play, called Strawhead, was being workshopped for two nights only at the Actors Studio, and it was written and directed by Norman Mailer: one of my favorite writers.
Now, I recently had an exchange here at TNB about Mailer, who was criticized, as he’s often been, for his gassy, empty prolixity. Still, I’ve always thought that those who don’t like Mailer probably haven’t read his best stuff. The Executioner’s Song, I think, is a masterpiece. (There’s some talk about it in my novel, Banned for Life.) So is Mailer’s book about the Apollo 11 mission, Of a Fire on the Moon; and his political journalism is, to me, without parallel. Here’s a bit from a piece about the Kennedys he wrote in 1960, shortly after spending an afternoon with Jackie Kennedy, who famously detested politics:
“Do you think she’s happy?” asked a lady, an old friend, on the beach at Wellfleet.
“I guess she would rather spend her life on the Riviera.”
“What would she do there?”
“End up as the mystery woman, maybe, in a good murder case.”
In fact, after JFK was gunned down in 1963 — easily the most discussed murder case of the late twentieth century — his wife was forever viewed as something of a mystery, because she never spoke publicly about the awful day. Later she married the shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, so she did indeed spend much time on yachts in the Mediterranean, thus corroborating Mailer’s assessment of her. The man was brilliant. Some of his descriptions of real-life people in his books point almost to X-ray vision, so much was he able to extrapolate from details typically overlooked. Even the shape of a person’s nose might reveal to Mailer his or her hidden character. He was a prodigious face-reader.
So part of me never wanted to meet him, fearing what he might conclude from the shape of my nose. But I did want to see his play, so I walked with Sully to the Actors Studio, which was packed. The seats in the upstairs theater were arranged in a C-shape around the stage, and Mailer’s seat faced mine, while Sully sat a few rows below me. Then the lights dimmed and Mailer’s daughter, Kate, took the stage. She was playing Marilyn Monroe. That was weird. Mailer had publicly lusted after Monroe, and he’d cast his daughter in the part. He’d also cast his wife, Norris Church, as a friend of Monroe’s, and at one point she and Kate performed a quasi-erotic dance, and I looked across the room to study Mailer’s reaction. It was dark, of course, but I noticed Mailer’s hands, which were folded over his belly, rise and fall as he heavily breathed. My God, he was breathing heavily as he watched his daughter, playing a woman he wanted to fuck, do an erotic dance with her stepmother! Things were getting stranger and stranger.
They didn’t, in fact. The play was finally tame. And I thought it was a terrific play, as good as I’d hoped, and I couldn’t get over how privileged I was to be seeing it. I mean, I was a Brooklyn hipster-punk who rarely ventured north of 14th Street when I hit Manhattan. I walked down to Sully during intermission to praise the play, and he said, “Oh, it’s terrible. It’s awful. It’s the worst.”
On and on he went, explaining why it was such a terrible play. I don’t recall his reasons, but I looked up to him enormously, and decided he must be right. Then I realized that everyone in the audience except for me had returned to their seats, and I was holding up the start of the second act. And Norman Mailer was staring at me. Yes, I was now the subject of his X-ray vision, and who knew what he was going through his mind about this interloping punk kid, with his retro haircut and black leather jacket, who was causing him and everyone else to wait. I freaked out. I somehow managed to get away from Sully, who was still babbling, and took my seat and, as the lights dimmed, noticed that Mailer was still staring at me. Was he angry? Was he reading my character from the shape of my nose? I could no longer enjoy the play. Not that I would’ve been able to enjoy the play even if Mailer hadn’t just read my character from the shape of my nose. No, Sully had convinced me it was bad, and bad it was. I could hardly wait for it to finish.
Then it did, and I got up and walked down to Sully, who said, “You know, the second act wasn’t bad at all!”
Wow, thanks. You ruined it for me, and now you decide you like it. Then I saw that Mailer was standing by the door of the theater and shaking the hand of every single member of the audience as he thanked them for turning out. My God! Were there no other exits?
There weren’t. Now I was going to have to meet Norman Mailer, who’d have a close-up view of my nose. I was literally the last person to approach him; and I extended my hand and said, very nervously, “I’m a huge fan.”
Meantime, there are books full of words he didn’t say to me personally, and they survive, while Mailer himself is dead. And Sully’s dead, too; but he survives on film, forever swapping dialogue with Al Pacino.
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Original comment thread:
Comment by Ben Loory
2009-06-06 03:16:45
“So I was kind of mad at Sully for telling Al Pacino I was a sheepherder.”
i might put this on the fridge.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-06-06 03:20:36
Coming from you, a very funny guy, I consider that a great compliment.
See you on Monday, yes?
Comment by Irene Zion (Lenore’s Mom)
2009-06-06 03:55:12
Duke,
It would have a totally different flavor, had you written the “fucking sheep” part the way you originally intended. I’m not sure which I would have preferred.
You were very lucky to have met so many famous people at such a young age. At any age, actually.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-06-06 04:59:19
And I continue to meet them. But some I don’t admire, and that’s the thing that matters most. I mean, it was, in a strange way, a very big deal to have met Matt from the Walkmen, and he wouldn’t be at the top of most people’s lists. Celebrity per se stopped being an area of interest for me a long time ago. But that no doubt owes in large part to having met so many celebrities at a young age, and, as you say, I was lucky to do so.
Comment by Irene Zion (Lenore’s Mom)
2009-06-07 05:33:28
doggon it, where is my gravitar?
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-06-07 09:54:34
I think it’s returned, yes? I see it.
Comment by Ben Loory
2009-06-07 01:18:05
monday, yes. that’s soon, right? this is the weekends?
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-06-07 09:52:53
Yes, writer, Monday is soon. It’s tomorrow.
Comment by N.L. Belardes
2009-06-06 05:59:44
Now I gotta go shake your hand D.R. so I can say I’m no degrees of separation from you, and one degree of separation from Al Pacino, Sully and Mailer. I’ll accomplish so much in that handshake that I’ll wet myself!
This was a fun piece. I dig the bit about Al Pacino with his Serpico looks and dog named Lucky…
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-06-06 11:32:00
Does this mean you might drive down on Monday?
Please don’t wet yourself. I say this noting a few mentions of having to badly pee on Twitter of late.
I would, of course, wet myself if Pacino to discover this piece and comment with: “That’s right! I WAS wearing a yellow headband at that wedding!”
Comment by N.L. Belardes
2009-06-06 21:40:25
hhahahahaha… man, that park walk was hell. My bladder might as well have been a full pack with bricks. Maybe on Monday, yo.
Comment by Greg Olear
2009-06-06 07:05:40
A great post, D.R.
NYC is great like those magical moments happen, and you find yourself in a small room with someone who really admire because someone knew someone who knew someone who gave you tickets.
Yeas ago, when I first moved to the city, I went to a celebration of Arthur Miller’s 80th birthday party at Town Hall. I didn’t meet anybody, but it was a small crowd, and I was 22 or 23, and there were so many luminaries on hand: Edward Albee, John Guare, Sam Waterson, Dianne Wiest, and of course Miller himself, who managed to use the word “purloined” without sounding pretentious.
(Miller is one of the more enviable writers of all time. “Hi, I’m Arthur Miller. I wrote the Great American Play, I did lots of important work for PEN, I lived a long and distinguished life, and, oh yeah, I fucked Marilyn Monroe.”).
And I know how you feel about being afraid to meet people. I rarely see live music for that reason — 9 times out of 10, the band I love on record sucks live, and something is lost for me.
And agree, the “fucking sheep” tangent is great.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-06-06 11:37:56
Well, the “sheep” tangent just goes to show you. I very nearly cut it.
It’s weird with bands: you can never tell how one you’ve only heard on recordings will sound live. But these days I don’t see as much live music as I used to, since most bands just plain suck, whether you’ve heard them before or you haven’t.
And Miller: what you say reminds me of a friend who met Miller shortly before the end. As they were talking, my friend said he all he could think about was that Miller had fucked her. He went on: “I mean, he ate her out!” I think he was staring at Miller’s mouth when this thought came to him.
Thanks very much for your comment — the first exchange we’ve had.
Comment by Brad Listi
2009-06-06 07:21:06
Who shows up to a wedding with a pound puppy named Lucky?
One man: Serpico.
Great piece.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-06-06 11:42:43
Here’s something I left out: after the reception, Sully walked me to the bus stop (he lived in Queens), and he said, “You know, Al always complains about people bothering him, and then he shows up at a wedding looking like this.” In other words, he was practically holding a sign above his head that said: I AM AL PACINO, STAR OF SERPICO.
Your good opinion always holds special significance for me. I miss it when I hear nothing, he said by way of a broad hint.
Should I add a wink here? Better, I think, to wish that your back is improved and that you’re having a great weekend.
Comment by jonathan evison
2009-06-06 07:56:34
. . . great post, duke . . . hey, if mailer was smiling in that picture he’d look just like alfred e. newman’s grandfather . . .seriously, take a look . . .
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-06-06 11:43:33
I see it. I’ll probably always see it from now on. Thanks. Thanks a fucking lot.
Comment by Simon Smithson
2009-06-06 15:10:15
How do you think I feel? I’m going to spend the rest of the day looking at my own nose in the mirror…
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-06-06 19:01:32
Apparently, this is something that Brad’s dog does on a regular basis. And, you know, ever since I wrote this thing, which was only about a day ago, I’ve been tempted to study my own nose, which would probably tell me nothing except that I’m the kind of person who would post a piece about Norman Mailer on TNB.
Comment by Jim Simpson
2009-06-06 14:29:59
Why Evison you’re MAD!
Comment by Dew(ed)
2009-06-06 09:13:02
I enjoyed this very much.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-06-06 11:44:23
Nothing could make me happier. Seriously.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-06-06 12:06:12
Great piece. I’m a huge fan. Now, will you say ‘Thank you’ to me in a deep voice, please?
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-06-06 18:56:09
I just did. Out loud. And your picture is smiling at me, so I must have done okay.
Comment by Jim Simpson
2009-06-06 14:28:59
Your portrayal of Mailer as borderline incestuous at one moment and shy the next is sheer brilliance. I think you’re on par with the man for judging faces. And Sully sounds like such a wonderful character.
Great piece … thank you! (And I with the ubiquitous Irene: “I hate fucking sheep” would have been flavorful.)
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-06-06 18:53:47
Vanity prevented me from taking that step.
Sully was a great, great guy. One day I’ll have to write about how we met. That’s a story unto itself. And it’s truly one of my biggest regrets that I lost touch with him. I kick myself for it all the time.
A detail about that night I left out: Kate Mailer had used a pseudonym on the program, I assume because she didn’t want strangers to know she was Mailer’s daughter. I knew who she was because I’d seen a picture of the Mailer children (there’s something like nine of them) all lined up together with the old man. Anyway, Gay Talese was in the audience that night, and I remember seeing him in the lobby talking to someone with a look of shock, and as I brushed past him, I heard him say something like: “She IS?! By which wife? Adele?” So, obviously, he’d just learned who “Kate Calian” (I think that’s the name she used) was, and maybe surprised, as was I, that Mailer would cast his daughter as the object of his desire.
But I like that he was ballsy enough to do it, reaction be damned. And she wasn’t a bad actress at all. She performed the part in a platinum wig and later ended up on the cover of Vanity Fair wearing it. I tried to find an image of that cover and include it, but I obviously couldn’t and didn’t.
Thanks for the kind words.
Comment by Brin Friesen
2009-06-06 19:39:36
Duke, you’re getting quite the command these days. Boy oh boy.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-06-06 19:54:17
Didn’t I tell you this story in person once? I love acting the role of Mailer.
Comment by Andrew Johnson
2009-06-06 21:13:56
Good to see reactions kicking off thanks to the TNB commentary function.
I still think crush-grip, wife-beater Norman Mailer is ram jam full of shit, but I will possibly force myself to read ‘The Executioner’s Song’ on your recommendation.
However, I’m not sure your Jackie Kennedy example is convincing. (To me anyway). How much of a soothsayer does someone have to be to predict that born social-climber Jackie Kennedy would be into a retirement of sailing? The murder bit is a total coincidence.
Gore Vidal had it right, I reckon:
“…I, alone in the family, did not condemn Jackie’s marriage to Onassis, since I, too, had once been a small player in the commodities exchange market.”
And, I fail to see how stabbing your wife with a pair of scissors is any way macho.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-06-06 22:56:26
I misspoke, though a propensity for violence would, by the definitions of some, alas be more characteristic of the male of the species. And not that it matters, but the weapon used on Adele Mailer was a small knife — a penknife, I believe it was. Meantime, I’m unfamiliar with any instances of Mailer beating Adele prior to this incident or afterwards, and that goes for his other wives. His last marriage was, from all accounts, loving and mutually satisfying.
Still, I don’t judge writers, or artists of any sort, on the basis of their personal lives. If I did, I would surely be pressed to list more than a handful worthy of admiration. People fuck up. Mailer did, in a big way, when he stabbed his wife; but I personally think, based on what I know of him, that he was undergoing a breakdown at the time. It’s even reflected in his writing style. There’s a big difference between the Mailer of the fifties and the Mailer of the sixties and beyond.
I selected the bit I did about Jackie K./O. because it was simple and so, I hoped, wouldn’t distract from the overall flow. But we’ll have to disagree about Mailer’s intuition where she’s concerned, because at the time there was nothing to indicate that JK/O would end up anywhere except in the White House or riding horses in Central Park. Yes, she was a social climber, but even social climbers have their distinguishing characteristics. Some are sporty; some aren’t. Some move abroad; some stick close to home. I find Mailer’s comments telling, and it’s easy for us, years after JK/O died and so armed with full knowledge of her life, to say, “Oh, well, anybody could see that coming.” Apparently, in her own time, not everybody did. Her marriage to Onassis was received as a shock: a former First Lady — enormously admired for the courage she showed when her husband was murdered in front of her, and for her dignity in the days afterwards, personally making the funeral plans and prodding her toddler son to salute his passing casket — wedded to an aging European playboy? It didn’t wash at all.
The Vidal remark is, of course, witty, as almost any remark by Vidal would be. Still, I always found it mean-spirited on his part to have cut JK/O completely out of his life due to his row with RFK. In Vidal’s later memoir, Point to Point Navigation, he speaks of running into JK/O in London years after the row and essentially snubbing her. But then, I don’t really admire Vidal as a person, though I have enjoyed his writing.
Finally, while I’m flattered that you would consider a recommendation I’ve made, I hope you won’t force yourself to read the book in question or any other, since I regard reading as a pleasure and not something to be endured. You’ve spoken, in at least one post I’ve read, of wanting to move away from the literature of the late twentieth century, which you find problematic for philosophical reasons that, I must confess, I don’t altogether understand; something to do with egocentricity and the way it’s reflected in the first person, as if the human mind were capable of a kind of Google Earth impartiality. But I’m admittedly dense and not much on abstractions, just as I’m also probably guilty, in your eyes, not only of first-person egotism but of apparently wishing to debate the merits of one obscure punk band over another. In fact, I don’t; but if I did, why would that be any worse than discussing the merits of one obscure writer over another? And Mailer is, by now, fast becoming obscure. Which is another reason you might not want to force yourself to read him, though, again, I’m flattered that I might momentarily have been a source of reconsideration.
Comment by Andrew Johnson
2009-06-06 23:58:18
You’re absolutely right, if we paid too much heed to an artists’ predilections outside the workshop, we’d have nothing good to read or to listen to. But I’m not just saying he was a misogynist toad, I’m saying he was a mostly awful writer whose work falls out of my head almost immediately after I read it. This is my rule-of-thumb of writing worth spending any time on at all, and it trumps any shenanigans off the page.
In terms of my woefully underdeveloped C20th theory, I just think that the reverence for the ‘Writeur’, as in the expert with some kind of rarefied superiority to other creators of content i.e. anybody with an internet connection, is under threat.
If the C20th was the century of self, as in Freud’s conception of it, is it any wonder that the solipsistic ‘Autheur’—as in the writerly superego towering above mere mortals—grew as the hero of the age? No it isn’t surprising. But it’s over.
A stance as a mighty ‘Autheur’ with some unique access to a superior point-of-view by virtue of the use of an extra couple of names on a cover jacket might still sell a few books, but the notion that The Author has some kind of right to be revered strikes me as completely redundant, and kind of funny.
There’s a British comedy series called ‘Garth Merenghi’s Darkplace’, which skewers the Writeur beautifully. The principal character is “humble fabulist,” Garth Mereghi, an author who has “written more books than he has read”. Check it out, it’s wonderful.
I hope, as a rock star, you don’t take this the wrong way, but I see it as akin to the triumph of the DJ over the rock star which took everybody by surprise (apart from Marshall McLuhan maybe) at the end of the century.
Cheers,
aj
Comment by D.R. Haney
I’m not a rock star and never claimed to be one.
I do hope you like this new world, which I admit has now arrived, and that you yourself aren’t buried in the anthill. I clicked on your other blog, because you frankly irritated me so much that I wanted to know a little more about you, and I noticed that you had a banner announcing “quality in all things” or some such. However, I’m afraid that dedication to quality isn’t shared by most, and the end result is going to be nothing that sticks, as almost nothing does already. I mean, that was your criteria for excellence, yes? And didn’t you just post a piece which ended with a call for quality writers of this new and better breed you have in mind?
But I don’t think there are any, and I don’t think there will be. The death of the individual means that most art created in the near future will be tantamount to pyramids, with countless contributors working in tandem, like bees in a hive. And I’m afraid I don’t find bees very interesting; and nor, I think, when you finally get a good look at the work produced by this new breed of collectivist human insect, will you. But that’s just a guess. I hate to invoke the dread “punk” word, but I can’t help but be reminded of punks I’ve known who were always calling for the death of elitist institutions — no buffering middle-men and free distribution and let’s create tools so that EVERYBODY can make music or any art they choose to practice — only to hear them recently say, “Gosh, this sucks. Everything I see and hear these days is so bad. I guess maybe we do kind of need buffers, huh?”
Oh, and I’m not entirely convinced that the age of the DJ is going to be as durable as do you, apparently. Four years ago, I couldn’t even go to a mom-and-pop coffee shop without some hipster spinning on the counter. There were practically DJs in the men’s room; DJs under the sink. I don’t encounter that so much now.
Finally, I’m not at all persuaded that the writer (I’ll use my own spelling here) was the hero of the twentieth century or of any other age. Most people don’t give a damn about writers, and they never did, since most people, as any glance at the comment board on YouTube will prove, have little or no respect for language. Writers were, and occasionally still are, heroes primarily to other writers, and to those few who don’t regard themselves as writers but are educated enough to appreciate books. Your view, to me, is highly idiosyncratic, as well as unwittingly elitist. However, I don’t mean that as an attack. I’m appraising value, as I see it, in the marketplace of ideas.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-06-07 01:10:20
PS
I will indeed watch “Garth Merenghi’s Darkplace.” I’m yet another fan of British humor. Thanks for the link.
Comment by Brin Friesen
2009-06-07 07:16:42
Apart from your rebuttal, which I enjoyed nearly more than the peanut butter puff cereal I accompanied it with, may I ask how you removed Andrew’s photo? Was that entirely necessary?
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-06-07 09:50:26
Ask Andy. I didn’t remove his photo. I think he has two commentary accounts at TNB, or something. I noticed on his own last blog that he would alternate between a message with a photo and then one without one.
Comment by Marni Grossman
2009-06-07 11:20:13
Oh, Norman Mailer.
I don’t think we feminists consider him Public Enemy #1 anymore, but he remains an object of criticism. Which is what you get when you’re openly and- more often than not- grossly misogynist.
I read “The Deer Park” this year and considered it a largely wasted effort. That you say good things about him may make me reconsider the rest of his oeuvre, though…
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-06-07 11:56:17
I agree with you about “The Deer Park.” It’s a very strange book. I know he struggled with it terribly, and I think it shows.
Mailer had an odd career. He was catapulted into literary stardom at the age of 25 or 26 with his first novel, “The Naked and the Dead,” which basically exhausted his supply of material. “The Deer Hunter” was written when he was trying to figure out what to do next, as was everything he did up until “Advertisements For Myself.” That’s when he first hit on what would become his mature voice.
I think Mailer’s rep as a misogynist is grossly exaggerated, but that’s what he gets for writing a truly dreadful book like “An American Dream,” which begins with the narrator killing his wife. I think he was trying to capitalize on the scandal that came with his real-life wife-stabbing, but that’s no excuse.
Comment by Rachel Pollon
2009-06-07 11:43:10
Having Al Pacino say, “Wow, this guy is powerful” about you, even while wearing a yellow headband, is pretty freakin’ cool.
This was a great read. I felt like I was there with ya, bartending, worrying about what Norman Mailer thought… fun!
Meetchoo tomorrow,
R
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-06-07 11:58:12
Believe me, I was thrilled to get a compliment from Al Pacino, even if it was in regard to my having wrung his hand.
Yes, I’ll see you tomorrow. This is going to be interesting, methinks — a lot of people who’ve met online now meeting face to face.
Comment by Megan
2009-06-10 04:34:04
Just wanted to say I stayed up until midnight (extremely late for office drones) reading Banned the other night, despite severe sunburn/fatigue. Jason’s just broken up with Astrid and Irina’s confiding in him.
What you need to do is some bizarre book tour stunt a la John Wray
Smashing opening line. Compulsively readable dialogue.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-06-10 14:45:59
Thanks a million. This comment couldn’t have come at a better moment, as I’m feeling demoralized for, among other reasons, the death of my computer the other day, taking with it a good deal of data that wasn’t backed up and I hope can be saved, when I come by enough money to take the hard drive to a specialist. I mean, the computer pretty much caught on fire, with smoke coming out of it and so on. I’m writing this message on a geriatric model that’s got a lot of kinks I’m slowly trying to figure out.
I must confess that I don’t know anything about John Wray’s book-tour stunts, though I hope Google will enlighten me. I looked, but I haven’t come up with the goods so far. It’s very clear, though, that something will have to be done to get the word out beyond the polite track I’ve taken so far. Maybe eventually an idea will come.
In the meantime, I hope your sunburn has improved. I was just talking about sunburns the other day. I burn easily, being so fair, so I have to taken special care when outside, though I almost always fail to do so. I once got so sunburnt that I almost had to go to the emergency room. It felt like bugs were crawling around under my skin. A horrible experience, and a potentially dangerous one, given that such a burn can have long-term consequences.
Thanks again, and I hope “Banned” will continue to treat you well.
Comment by Megan
2009-06-11 04:45:09
Sorry about your compu! Tempting to see its combustion as symbolic.
John Wray promoted his 2nd book, Canaan’s Tongue, by using his $5,000 publicity budget to build a raft and float down the Mississippi, giving interviews and readings along the way.
http://dogmatika.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/method-writer-an-interview-with-john-wray/
Hardcore, huh? Put your thinking cap on.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-06-11 04:53:25
Thanks for the link. I’m responding after a long, long night, so I’ll check and study it, for reals, when I wake in a few hours, keeping to my Dracula schedule.
As to the combustion being symbolic, I can only pray that isn’t the case. However, last night an expert friend told me it’s probably salvageable, and can likely be fixed on the cheap. That, too, is something I’ll pray on, unholy creature that I am.