Richard à clef
January 21st, 2009by Richard Cox
TULSA, OK-
Recently I wrote a novel. Well, I didn’t write the whole thing recently, but I did recently finish it, and by finish I mean I’m waiting to hear from my agent if he likes it or not. He’ll suggest changes and so will an eventual editor, so it’s not really “finished.”
In the meantime, I have sought the opinions of friends and loved ones, which is an experience both rewarding and nerve-racking. Rewarding to finally share it with people you care about, and nerve-racking because those people immediately go looking for themselves in the story, and further they conclude all opinions contained within are yours.
Matters are complicated further when you write a novel like this one, which is a sort of Roman à clef about your own life and/or the life of the famous science fiction author, Philip K. Dick. The story is also an homage to VALIS, Dick’s Roman à clef about his own life…and for those that don’t know, Dick believed he was a sort of dualistic being who lived a life in the present while simultaneously existing as someone else in ancient Rome. Dick believed these things strongly–it was the central preoccupation of the last years of his life–but he also suspected he was schizophrenic and not at all stable.
So my story begins with the protagonist living a life strikingly similar to my own, but almost immediately he realizes something is going terribly wrong. Either he’s been given a task to find the truth about his own life (and the world as a whole), or he’s hallucinating and basically losing his mind. Things spin out of control very quickly for him, and he says and does things that become increasingly reprehensible.
It’s one thing for a bunch of readers you’ve never seen and will never know to read your work, but something altogether different for your friends and loved ones. When you are intentionally trying to mirror your own life, people close to you have every right to wonder what is real and what isn’t. And yet the very point of the novel is to question the nature of reality itself, to confuse your own reality with that of a person who could be crazy, and at the same time force the protagonist to suffer through his own unique problems.
But people don’t want to hear that. No, they just look at you funny after they read it. They don’t return your calls anymore. They block you on MySpace. Drop you from Facebook.
Move away.
Burglarize your house.
Lock you up in a Black Iron Prison of your own design and throw away the key forever.
Actually, I could be making up some or all of this. I could be embellishing my own experience for dramatic effect or conjuring it out of thin air. The reality is almost every novel contains elements of the author’s life, no matter how exaggerated or well-disguised.
So maybe this blog is all bullshit. Maybe I didn’t even write a novel at all.
The point is you don’t really know, do you?
Tags: black iron prison, philip k dick, Solipsism, valis
I recently finished a memoir and emailed the first half to a friend and never heard back, at least not yet. I suspect events of craziness in my life that I am so used to, appear shocking to others. I talked to Jerry Stahl, who wrote Permanent Midnight, about this phenom and he said you have to realize some people might live more sedate lives than you. You never have any control about how readers will perceive you. I guess that’s part of the fun. But yes, I do feel naked when someone else is reading a large chunk of my work. It is both terrifying and mystifying. Anyway, I’m glad to see I’m not the only one with the heebie jeebies. I love PKD by the way. He was, as Hunter Thompson might have said, too weird to live, too rare to die. Good luck with the book.
Thank you. In previous novels the settings have been high-concept and that has helped deflect these types of questions, but in this one the line is blurred. I can’t imagine writing a memoir when the people who pissed me off were still alive. Ha.
PKD was great. In some ways he helped me write the book. Or maybe not.
Good luck with the memoir.
Richard,
I believe you wrote a novel and I believe that it will be great and that you will lose half of your friends and relatives. It’s worth it.
I believe I wrote it, too. Hopefully we’re both right.
Even hindsight doesn’t offer 20/20. We do what we must in spite of other people’s warped vision, some times because of it. Best of luck on the publishing.
Good stories find some kind of truth. I think if you pull punches you invite mediocrity. I don’t need any more of that than I already have.
How funny! I was just having a similar conversation the other day about this very thing!
Here’s my conclusion: my memories of certain events are mine, whether they happened that way or not. And I have the right to do with them what I choose. I also have no control (tragically) over what people who may or may not see themselves in what I do with those memories. So if they choose to be whiny babies over inconsequential things that no one else in the world is going to recognize as “them” - even if it’s not - then that’s their choice.
i hope you wrote a novel. I wanna add it to my TNB shelf.
I have a couple you can already add if you really want! (shameless plug)
You do have the right to do with your memories as you choose, but others also have the right to be offended by your rendering of them. You’re right, though…usually it’s a non-issue. It’s not like we’re all Pat Conroy, dragging our families through the fictional mud.
You let friends and family review it?
There’s your problem right there. You should let some one you don’t give two shakes of a lambs tail about read it.
Like TNB’s #1 groupie
Shirley, no one would give you the feedback I would give you.
And it isn’t burglarizing if I don’t take any thing. I was just rifling through the trash like any common stalker. It’s in the groupie code book, page 12, section 4, item number 16.
Now pass that puppy over. I want to see what you said about me in that crazy memoir of yours. You better have given me a nice ass at least.
:^)
You are TNB’s #1 fan, aren’t you? You haven’t moved to a cabin in rural Colorado, have you?
And don’t call me Shirley!
good luck on the (maybe) novel?
Love Phillip K. Dick.
I once read about 4 of his books in a row…and I think I started to go crazy…
That’s not surprising since writing those books drove him crazy, too!
“But people don’t want to hear that. No, they just look at you funny after they read it. They don’t return your calls anymore. They block you on MySpace. Drop you from Facebook.”
And I didn’t even let anyone read mine!
Seriously for a second (no, honestly), I think the fear really comes when YOU know there’s a chunk of you in there and it’s not all that well hidden. “Write about what you know.” they say. We only really know one way of interpreting the world and we don’t know for sure that anyone else does so in quite the same way. I guess reading somebody else’s work is actually a way of letting ourselves catch a glimpse of somebody else’s interpretation, hopefully in a reassuring way. (Cos we’re all about the reassurance, yo.)
I have been kicking broad-stroke ideas for a couple of novels around for a while now, and the second thing that stops me writing them (the first being stone cold laziness), is that they’re built on a main character who is essentially me-as-is or me-as-was, but way more fucked up than I (hope) I ever have been. And as much as it’s kinda fascinating to explore who that person might have been, I really don’t want anyone reading it who doesn’t know where the fict/faction line is drawn. Cos basically I’m all about the self-image, yo.
I didn’t know about PKD’s dualist thing. I do know that I’m chuffed you took this one to a finish and just have the bit left where everyone pisses in it until they like the flavour, and that I’m looking forward to reading it.
Sounds like you put a lot of yourself into it (which is a great and brave thing), but you don’t mention whether you’re proud of it. You should stand by it before public opinion backs you. Makes you seem even braver. ;->
I’m absolutely proud of it. It’s far better than my first two books. And while the protagonist in this one seems more like me than characters in the others, in many ways he’s my polar opposite. Which is, in a way, part of the point.
Now write those novels!
Excellent!! (Do you have a cure for the stone cold laziness?)
Imagine yourself failing at the one thing in life at which you really want to excel. That’s what does it for me.
Congrats on nearly finishing your book. I can’t wait to read it so I too can wonder about your psyche.
Good luck w/ the editors.
Thank you.
Richard:
Speaking as one who is currently finishing up a novel, I can relate to your situation, or at least empathize. I wish you all the best with everything.
Oh, and by the way, Josie. Just to let you know, I gave you a *fiiiiiiiine* ass in my novel. That ass starts on page 37 and goes all the way to 137.
100 pages of fine ass. Now there’s a best-seller for you.
Thank you, Rich. And good luck to you as well.
Thanks Rich - I knew I could count on you to take the great truths and make them grandeur!
lol
- Pull the trash to the curb sugar, I’ve got midnight stalking duty at your place tonight. xo
I read this to my analyst… she cleared some time for you.
I think she should talk to my protagonist. He’s the one with the problems, the jerk.
I think it’s pretty obvious which character was based on me. The leggy brunette with the wicked smarts and sharp wit, natch. I almost feel bad for the protagonist, seeing how he’s so desperately in love with her. Right now, I’ve stopped at the scene on the bridge–he isn’t going to jump is he? No, wait– don’t spoil it for me.
PS, I also found five references to me in this blog, but I’ll have you know that I’ve held the designs for that prison for five years now.
Your whole comment makes me more sure than ever that our creator is imperfect.
Dear Richard,
It’s okay.
You don’t have to write convoluted TNB blogs tippy-toeing around the obvious question—you can just come right out and ask me.
Yes, you can name the novel “Tawni” if you really want. I would be flattered. Really.
As I am reading the copy you sent me, I realize your latest manuscript is all about me and the story of my life. It’s really clever the way you’ve disguised these written events as the actions of a man who seemingly has nothing in common with me. But you and I know better, don’t we?
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge,
Tawni
There is no one, objective reality because we are all the center of our own universe.
Right?
So what color is the sky in TawniWorld?
Right. We all star in our own novels, don’t we?
Speaking of stars, the TawniWorld sky is an intoxicatingly swirled blend of Mermaid Blue and Blood Red.
What color is the sky in RichardWorld?
The lovely blue of the most magical eyes. Puffy fair weather clouds are the sclera.
Ooooooh… puffy clouds. Your magical blue-eyed world sounds pretty. You toss a few unicorns in the iris, maybe get a pile of kittens to comprise the vitreous humor, and I am definitely vacationing there.
Ah yes, PKD is good stuff. The last three of his books, the VALIS trilogy, will eventually be recognized as the masterpieces they are. Or so I hope.
Michael Chabon recently wrote something about how hard it is for people close to an author to read the stuff they write and not ascribe certain aspects of the characters to the author’s life and personality etc. I would like to write for a living, but unfortunately have neither the talent nor the courage to do so. I have a perpetual fear that the people I know would read something I write and immediately think that, if one of my characters is completely fucked, I must be completely fucked.
But that is neither here nor there.
Keep us updated on the progress. I’d be immensely interested in reading your novel, and thinking that you must be an insane miscreant all the while.
i like that you can put all of your “i wonders” into words and make readers go “hmmm, i wonder too”
can’t wait to read more of your wondering! your agent and that editor need to pick up the pace and not keep us waiting
I sure wish he would pick up the pace. I’m tired of waiting, too!
How did I miss this blog?
You’re ignoring me.
One of the reasons — heck, the main reason — I like to read novels is to get to know the author. Whether or not the novel is a roman a clef (or a Richard, or a Henry Miller), it is the work of the individual author, and how the story is told — the details, the plot, the structure, all of it — speaks volumes about who wrote it.
For example, one of my favorite writers is Paul Theroux. And I don’t give a crap about most of the subjects he writes about. I just find him fascinating. If I could download his brain into my own, I would. The best way to approximate that is to read his novels.
My follow-up novel — I’m also at the sent-to-my-agent-to-see-how-she-likes-it stage — can be succinctly described as a comic S&M romance. My mother keeps saying, “I can’t wait to read it!” And I’m like, “No effing way.” The lines are too blurry. But you write it anyway. If you’re not at least a little afraid of the reaction, you haven’t done your job.
GL with it…it’s such a laborious process, huh?
Good luck with yours, as well. I hate waiting to hear the verdict from my agent…until then I don’t really know for sure if I’ve written the world’s biggest turd or a NBA finalist. Although I’m not holding my breath on the latter. Haha.
And I totally agree about getting to know an author through his work. I’d download Jonathan Franzen’s brain if I could.
So what’s your first novel like?
Thanks, Richard.
My first novel, which is really my fifth completed novel, is called TOTALLY KILLER. I’ve been trying to answer the what’s-it-about question for months now, and I think I’ve finally come up with a succinct wrap-up: it’s a hipster “Firm,” set in NYC in 1991.
Best
Greg
PS
I bought your book today.
Commenting belatedly. However:
I’m about to publish a novel in which “the girl” is based very much (though not completely) on someone with whom I had a long, twisted, doors-slamming-and-tantrum-throwing affair. She asked to read it when I completed the first draft. I told her not to look for herself or to see me as the protagonist. A few days later she called me and said, “Well, I’ve read part of your book, and I feel like I want to throw up. Then I tell myself, ‘It’s actually a compliment,’ and I try to read more and I want to throw up again. And my boyfriend read part of it, and he kept saying, ‘This is so totally you!’” Despite my warning beforehand, I was secretly pleased to hear all that, especially the part about the boyfriend.