SAN FRANCISCO-
I recently flew south to do a piece for Poets & Writers magazine about a rather unorthodox writers camp. Called The Write Stuff, it’s run by a writer named Rock Adams. Ever hear of him?
LONG BEACH, CA-
My father drove a blue Opel Kadett. I was three, maybe four, and for this particular trip – maybe up north to my grandparents who lived close to the Danish border — he’d received a company car, a green Ford Coupe with a black vinyl top. I don’t remember what made it necessary, but the new, large car was exciting, and my sister and I had extra room in the back, even though the Ford had a sloping roofline. We were much too small to hit our heads.
SAN FRANCISCO-
I’ve been thinking a lot about book titles lately. My first published book (not the first book I’d written, but the first I’d sold), Calling Crow, had originally been titled by me as Cacique. Envisioned as a historical thriller, ala Clavell’s Shogun, I put a lot of thought into the title.
COLUMBUS, OH-
Never expect a good literary critique from a federal agent. I learned this the hard way, through a roundabout lesson via a maze of fear and loathing. These guys aren’t readers, they have other things on their mind. Seek your feedback elsewhere. They don’t hang in bookstores. (more…)
SAN FRANCISCO-
As usual, I drove to the municipal pool last Sunday. My route takes me past the soccer field. A game was in progress, one team wearing green shorts and jerseys, the other blue. Soccer is really big here in South City with the Mexicans and Central Americans. They’re out there most Sundays, their families picnicking on the grounds, watching. There’s always a truck parked alongside the field selling burritos and tacos. We also have a baseball field adjoining that. They usually play Saturday and some evenings under the lights. (more…)
VANCOUVER, BC-
My eldest sister, Sara, was sixteen years old the night she ran away from home. My two older brothers and other older sister and I were in the den, sitting on the multi-colored shag carpet, watching “The Brady Bunch,” when Sara walked past us, clutching a bundle of laundry. No one paid her much attention; but as she walked through the room I looked up and she looked down and in that moment, that fractured, timeless glance, I saw her eyes, a searing, searching look inside her eyes. I have to go before I die; I can’t look back or else I’ll cry. Then she was gone, around the corner and down the stairs and, as I learned later that night, out of the house and our lives like an unwelcomed guest taking flight. (more…)
LOWER EAST SIDE, NY-
Hello! I’m new to The Nervous Breakdown, so I thought it would be appropriate to, in addition to expressing my gratitude, provide some kind of context for the posts I’ll be contributing.
I don’t know what I’m doing with my writing life, I don’t know how close I am to attaining my ultimate goals, and I don’t know if the knowledge that I’m lacking with regard to these issues is problematic, or whether that very lack of knowledge is essential to my progress.
I don’t think there’s anything particularly revelatory in the statement above—sociologically, it probably puts me squarely in a majority, not minority, position—but it’s a difficult utterance nonetheless. And it’s one that, perhaps due to my vocation as a writer (artist?), I find myself returning to over and over again.
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA-
Some day, I like to think to myself, I will write Important Books. They won’t start revolutions, highlight the problems of the free market, or end global warming, but they will highlight the frailties and follies of the human condition. Yes, people will say after reading them, yes, this is exactly what this means. My God! How could one Australian of above average height have grasped - and so easily - the deeper meaning of the subtle movements of life?
Also, the books will sell well, and I will be very rich. (more…)
BOULDER, CO-
It’s not so much insomnia as it is hypomania.
Anyway, the bottom line is that I can’t sleep. My brain does not stop.
It’s like texting with my best friend. I want to stop, but alas, I can not. (After all, we have things to do — kids to bring to soccer games and tacos to make.) So, we try to stop, we really try. But within fifteen minutes, one or the other of us types, “Hey, guess what I just thought of?” This is how my brain works. I try to stop thinking, then this little voice pipes up, “Hey, have you thought about the implications of cold fusion?”
Who the fuck cares?
But, there it is, I can’t stop thinking about an issue that I have no authority to think about. Sometimes it goes on like this for hours, or days.
I watch the TV to try to turn my mind off. Watching television at four in the morning has a side effect. Infomercial inundation. That’s a problem for me. I am hopelessly naive, and these commercials prey on people like me.
Every night I tell myself not to give in, but resistance is futile. (more…)
MIAMI BEACH, FL-
I was really looking forward to seeing Dubai because I had heard so much about it. I had heard it was ultra-modern, the gigantic buildings, the man-made islands out in the ocean. Let me tell you a little about it since I’ve been there to see it and you can decide what you think about it yourself.
TOMS RIVER, NJ-
BROOKLYN, NY-
On New Year’s Eve, a friend asked if we were doing resolutions. “Well,” I answered, “I think mine is the same as it always is — to not be so easily annoyed with people.” She responded that hers was to be nicer to people. “But I guess that’s kind of the same as yours, isn’t it?”
“Oh, no no no,” I answered. I’ve read all those articles about how you should make your resolutions things that are actually possible, so as not to set yourself up for failure. Therefore, as I told her, “I don’t actually have to be any nicer to people. I’m just going to try not to get so irritated by them.” If I’m really successful at keeping my resolution this year, no one will ever even notice.
NEWPORT COAST, CA-
Publisher’s Weekly called last week one of “the grimmest weeks in publishing in recent years.” Headlines on Wednesday morning announced a shake up at Random House—actually a reorganization involving the consolidation of several publishing groups. Later that day, Simon & Schuster announced the elimination of 2% of its workforce, with cuts occurring in all areas of the company. That evening found the president of Penguin discussing publicly the grim situation facing his competitors—layoffs, freezes on hiring and pensions, as well as freezes on new book acquisitions—which could only mean that his announcement was coming next. Sure enough, Thursday morning, Penguin announced employees would not receive their annual pay raises in the new year. Sadly, we’re used to news and rumors of small presses on the verge of crumbling, but with Barnes & Noble and Borders standing by their predictions of sales dropping as much as nine percent creating the worst holiday season ever, we’re watching the big boys stumble too. Should any small publisher attempt growth in this business climate? Should an author even bother to send out her work right now? YES. Absolutely.
LAS VEGAS, NV -
I’ve never paid for a hooker.
Never thought of it, really. But I’ve known a few people that have. I even worked with a waitress that once worked at a brothel. I think it was in Sparks.
“Every man should have a hooker at least once,” she told me.
Maybe she was right. Maybe a man should have a hooker at least once. What did I know? I’ve heard stories. Never heard a bad one. All delivered with a smile.
A friend stationed at Camp Pendleton. Got shellacked and skipped over to Mexico for a little nookie. Crazy dude in town from El Paso. Too drunk to make the long haul to the Bunny Ranch but hit a brothel in Pahrump.
“Got me some strange,” he said.
TOMS RIVER, NJ-
I guess it’s a good thing that Nick Belardes and his post got me thinking about the generation I’m part of. I went to art school and for the longest time, ( I was living in New York City) I thought everyone in my class was the last generation to really make a difference, or a statement, guys like Eric White, Chuck Stone, Jill Greenberg (all graduated in front of me), just to name a few, who were all making their mark. I started going to parties on rooftops, went to Anthony Avildsen’s place and hung out with other movers and shakers, (his father directed Rocky) and ran into Oliver Berkman from time to time, he wrote Kicking and Screaming with Noah Baumbach, and most of the characters in that movie were based on people from our graduating year at college (I went to school with Oliver, not Noah Baumbach, but the guy named Skippy in that movie is directly based on someone in our class, along with everyone else in that movie, Oliver might argue that, but that’s what I heard, and the real Skippy wanted to play the role). So I thought for some reason that this would all bleed over to me. Why not? I was there, part of it all, in the City with all this talent. Then I got the call to go to France and teach photography to American students. A year later I came back and realized no one waited for me. Everyone was off getting their illustrations published in the New York Times Book review; having one man shows, publishing novels, writing more novels, and then Quentin Tarantino hit and I thought I could be a screenwriter. God, what a disaster, I wrote like a teenager with Tourettes and dyslexia, a funny combination if your walking down the street randomly talking about the world, not so much if you’re trying to write a screenplay.
CARMEL, CA-
When Angela has insomnia everybody suffers.
2am-
Me: Why are you on the floor?
Guy: You told me to get out of bed.
Me: You don’t want to sleep with me anymore because I’m too fat???
Guy: I do want to sleep with you because you’re beautiful, and you screamed if I didn’t get out of bed you would call the police.
Me: I can’t believe the first thing you say to me when I wake up is that I’m fat.
Guy: Can I get back in bed?
(more…)
BROOKLYN, NY –
As far as I can tell every writer has a book reading war story or two, wherein one travels 10 hours through blizzards or cross-country on a full-fare plane ticket in order to read to a snoozing hobo and a handful of bookstore employees. Perhaps this is what my publishers had in mind when I asked about giving readings in support of my first novel and they responded, “Eh, we don’t really do that so much.” For nobodies like me, is what they meant. I happen to know that in the weeks before my book came out my publicist was absolutely slammed with managing Pat Buchanan’s book tour. What does Pat Buchanan have that I don’t? This is not the first time I’ve asked myself this question.
BOULDER, CO-
Not too long ago, one of my favorite people in the whole world came to visit us from Denmark. He’s an incredible person. He’s smart, funny, and cooks for us when he comes to stay. He even brought our four-year-old a box of Lego, complete with a fire station, fire engine, and emergency vehicle. He rocks.
So when he informed me that one of my dogs looks like a famous Danish actor named Mads Mikkelsen, I was open-minded.
BAKERSFIELD, CA-
“I didn’t used to be good,” Mike said. We sat in his white truck in the middle of a dirt field. All of the workers were gone. We were getting paid just to sit there. Time-and-a-half for a few hours at least. The radio preacher was turned down. Mike’s door was open. One of his boots was practically touching the ground. Cars passed along a stretch of highway. “I worked overseas. I got into some trouble,” Mike added. He didn’t say about what. But the radio preacher seemed to say, “Amen.” (more…)
TOMS RIVER, NJ -
When I met Paul I didn’t know he could fly through windows, or wrestle ponies, even walk across fields of cut hay like a man who didn’t know that someday his world would end. He made me laugh until it hurt and did things I thought only comic book characters could achieve. He was shaped like a tree trunk; his waist and chest were beveled steel his arms resembled the hind legs of a racehorse. He had a head of straight ear length hair that made a slow traipse across his perfectly shaped head, and was combed by nothing more than a pillow. He always looked like he was just getting up, as if everything were in front of him, the day, his life, and nothing seemed out of his reach.
The first time I saw him he stood with the other counselors near Port Ban along the coast of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. The sun was setting over their shoulders and Paul looked like the rest of them, he smiled when the another counselors spoke seriously, like death, as he was tried to scare us with his idea of us walking five miles down the dirt road to camp. The front yard of the two bedroom coastal shack with weather beaten unstained shingles seemed out of place in comparison to the surrounding waist high grass. I looked down at the beaten grass under my feet, it looked like a space ship had just left after a long stay. Moving away from the group and passing the school bus which had brought us here from Massachusetts I wished it could take us to camp, even though the heat from the motor wafted in my direction and reminded me just how hot it was to ride in.
