Category Archives: Writing

MR. MAILER SPEAKS

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NormanMailer

As most of you know, I’ve been relentlessly pursuing Norman Mailer for an INTERVIEW WITH THE DEAD. Since he had originally proposed to meet in Provincetown, I’ve been scouring every inch of the town with the diminishing hope of finding him. So, as darkness began to shroud the city, I started back to Carpe Diem Guesthouse, to pack and finally head home to Boston. About a block away, I heard footsteps approach from behind. I turned and there he was, fists clenched, barrel chest and curly haired head leading the charge. I wondered if I was going to be face punched, but Mr. Mailer just invaded my space standing nose to nose.

MAILER: And where do you propose to conduct this little chat?

I nodded toward the guest house, practically grazing his forehead with my own and led the way inside.

ME: We can use one of their dining rooms.

Mailer: You would pick a hotel that has rooms named after authors but none of me.

ME: Must have been an oversight.

Mailer: Poppycock! Provincetown’s most famous author an oversight? I don’t think so! People have short memories.

ME: (laughing) Not at all. You’re all over the Internet, your books and essays still in print. Nobody has forgotten you.

MAILER: Then why did you interview that little homo before me? King I understood. But that pasty-faced girly man, Capote?

Both of us took our seats and Mailer’s fists curled even tighter as he leaned across the wooden table between us.

ME: It was you who said, “Harsh words live in the dungeon of the heart,” and that description seems pretty harsh.

MAILER: If you think that was harsh, you must be a fag too.

ME: Have you ever considered that all your misogyny, violence, and homophobia is really about your own love of masculinity? That deep down underneath you’re attracted to men—strong men, real boxers, something you weren’t or could never become?

MAILER: Do you really expect me to answer your half-ass pop psychology?

ME: I wasn’t trying to analyze you Mr. Mailer. Just looking at facts.

MAILER: And what facts might those be, Mister Klein?

ME: Where would you like me to begin, Norman? The Naked And The Dead? All about the boys who actually fought in the war as opposed to cooking like you did.

MAILER: You are a cheeky bastard, aren’t you? I like that.

ME: You’re making my point.

MAILER: I’ll use the language the publisher made me use in the book: fug you. I was in the Philippines with the 112th Cavalry.

ME: I know, but by all accounts, you were just in a couple of minor skirmishes before you were assigned to be a cook.

MAILER: Really now? Apparently I fought enough battles for the book to become a New York Times bestseller for 62 weeks. Oh, and in case you forgot, or didn’t know, named one of the “one hundred best novels in English language” by the Modern Library. Not bad for a cook, eh?

Me: A novel about which Gore Vidal wrote, “My first reaction to The Naked and the Dead was: it’s a fake. A clever, talented, admirably executed fake. I have not changed my opinion of the book since… I do recall a fine description of men carrying a dying man down a mountain… Yet every time I got going in the narrative I would find myself stopped cold by a set of made-up, predictable characters taken not from life, but from the same novels all of us had read, and informed by a naïveté which was at its worst when Mailer went into his Time-Machine and wrote those passages which resemble nothing so much as smudged carbons of a Dos Passos work.”

MAILER: (shaking his head) I wondered how long it would take before his name came up. Though you surprise me by not beginning with the Cavett fiasco. There is no greater impotence in all the world than knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you.

ME: If you believe that why do you call it a fiasco?

MAILER: I lost the fight, although I still maintain it was just a TKO. I simply couldn’t fight my hardest with Janet Flanner present. And, I have admitted to being drunk during the show. Handicapped if you will.

I began to speak but Mailer interrupted.

MAILER: Speaking of drink, do you have anything decent here?

ME: I thought you stopped drinking and smoking pot?

MAILER: Actually I stopped because it hurt my writing and health. Don’t write anymore, health doesn’t matter, and there is little pleasure lying around all day, every day. So, just get us some whiskey, all right?

I was lucky. Bourbon in one of Carpe Diem‘s kitchen cabinets. I brought it back with a couple of glasses. Helping himself to a healthy pour, he waved the liquor towards me.

MAILER: Drink up Klein, it’s not every day you get a chance to drink with a literary lion.

ME: Mr. Mailer, you really were one of the 20th century’s literary giants, but don’t you think all the macho, boxing, misogynistic, bullying posturing actually reduced your stature rather than enhanced it? I mean, head-butting Gore Vidal in the green room of The Dick Cavett Show, telling him on air that he ruined Kerouac by sleeping with him?

Nothing ever seemed to be enough for you. Six years later, you threw a drink at Vidal—and punched him—at a Lally Weymouth soirée. And even then Vidal’s response made you look small. Still on the floor, he said, “Words fail Norman Mailer yet again.”

At first I thought he was going to explode but he just took a deep swallow and refilled his glass.

MAILER: Time and quiet does give one a chance to reflect and I’ve had plenty of both. Still, every moment of  existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit. I never enjoyed the thought of dying even a little.

I want you and your readers to know that I’m not interested in absolute moral judgments. Just think of what it means to be a good man or a bad one. The good guy may be 65 percent good and 35 percent bad—that’s a very good guy. The average decent fellow might be 54 percent good, 46 percent bad—and the average mean spirit is the reverse. So say I’m 60 percent bad and 40 percent good. Should I suffer eternal punishment for that?

Also, I must say, while he might have made me look small with his clever retort, he deserved to be on the floor. Would you sit silently by when someone says, “Mailer, Henry Miller and Charles Manson as brother chauvinists who should be collectively referred to as M3.” Now, while I had many wives, to be compared to Charles Manson was frankly too much to tolerate.

ME: You don’t seem to be suffering eternal punishment. In fact, there’s a strong argument that it was the people around you who were punished. Hell, you nearly murdered the second of your six wives, Adele Morales.

MAILER: I never meant to kill her. It was 4 A.M. at a party to announce my candidacy to run for Mayor of New York and I walk into a room only to hear her say, “Come on, you little faggot, where’s your cojones?” It’s public record that I spent time in Bellevue for that act, which, while I won’t discuss, I do regret.

ME: Not at the time. Numerous people say you stood over her while she was hemorrhaging on the floor and said, “Let the bitch die.”

Mailer: Adele has written a book about our life together. She can have the final words on the subject. But here we are talking gossip and public behavior when you yourself say and I’ll quote, “Mr. Mailer, you really were one of the 20th century’s literary giants.” Yet all of our book talk amounts to Vidal’s insult of The Naked And The Dead. Have you really spent this much time pursuing me to talk about my public persona, or are we going to talk about my work?

ME: We’re there now, Mr. Mailer.

Mailer was right. We sat in Carpe Diem’s breakfast room the entire night and more—much to the chagrin of the other guests who came down for coffee and omelets and were seated in another area. But this is enough for today’s post.dtab NORMAN MAILER More to come.

“What lasts is the strength of your ideas and the force of your expression of them.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor

DETECTIVE FICTION, AN AMERICAN MYTH

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 “…down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.” Raymond Chandler.

This is the detective fiction I’m talking about. Where something deep within the American psyche hungers for the solitary individual who struggles against all odds.

What’s strange about this is the depth of that emotional desire. This, despite the mythology which underlies it. And it really is a myth. Our country was not formed by individual good guys taking on the bad. Our history has never been one against the many—though we’ve always been more than willing to position ourselves as the “white hats.” I mean, we were just helping Native Americans who refused the “American Way” and therefore defined who they were as the “enemy” in order to virtually exterminate them.

And really, we were just making our country the way it was supposed to be when we bought, sold, enslaved, and slaughtered defenseless Black people. Hey, they were only worth three fifths of a white. Good versus less than human, right?

And the more one reads about The Pinkerton Detective Agency, the less one can believe in honorable detectives struggling against “bad guys.” Hell, for the most part they were the bad guys.

Even our war history is one of aggression and usurpation of other peoples’ lands. Just ask Mexico. Plus, during the First and Second World wars we rode the back of the wave while other countries took the major hits. Hardly the brave society leading the way down those mean streets.

(WW1)

 

 

 

World War 2 Total Deaths (Approximate):
Soviet Union 23,954,000
China           15,000,000
Germany       7,728,000
Poland          5,720,000
Japan           2,700,000
India             2,087,000
Yugoslavia    1,027,000
Rumania          833,000
Hungary           580,000
France             567,600
Greece            560,000
Italy                 456,000
Great Britain    449,800
United States   418,500

So really, detective fiction (of the kind I write, and am writing about here) has a whole lot less to do with who we are than a romanticized fantasy of who we would like to be.

So how the hell does a detective fiction writer create a strong, believable reality which, at its heart, is just a fairytale? Obviously a ton has to do with a believable plot that keeps a reader turning pages. But, at least in my thinking, plot, while critical, is only one factor in the creation of something out of nothing. It takes more to fashion a readable authenticity that feels like the honest present, but emerges from a myth.

For me that begins with the major character. In my Matt Jacob series, that’s of course Matt. But for detective fiction to be experienced as real, the other characters have to be recognizable as well. Too many false notes in any of the book’s personalities trash the suspension of belief which is absolutely necessary to maintain interest. Kinda like spotting a fly in the ice cube of your bourbon. Ruins the moment—and the drink.

So we got plot, lead character, other characters. And there’s more.

Relationships. Despite the popular misconception that mysteries (or genre books in general) occupy a lower rung on literature’s ladder, I think writing honestly about relationships is critical for any novel. And especially for those books that are considered “throwaways.” In fact, I sometimes wonder whether the sloppiness about relationships that often exist within many genre novels is the reason people don’t take them seriously. Which is a damn shame. Because great writers in any genre write great books. Including Romance. And there’s more.

A sense of “place.” Not for nothing is the best of the best detective fiction located in an area (usually a city) that is an actual one (with or without accurate street names and neighborhoods), or one that feels absolutely real. If a reader can’t imagine the place in which the book’s characters reside, they just won’t believe anything else about the novel. Why should they? (An aside—Richard Russo, a contemporary author (not a detective fiction or mystery writer) is exquisite when it comes to defining “place.” I urge anyone who wants to learn how to make a town or area sing with a life of its own to read his work. He’s just that good). If someone can’t “see” where the characters live or how they interact with their environment, a major building block of any story is terribly compromised. Nothing that any serious author wants.

When I look at this post everything I’ve written seems pretty elemental and basic. But like everything else, the devil is in the details and it’s the writer’s responsibility to create those human details that allow for the reader to ignore our actual reality and engage and believe in the detective fiction myth. Not too different than “literature” is it?

At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable. Raymond Chandler

TIME TO REBOOT

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Last week I fired off an angry screed about our species and the horrors we perpetrate upon each other. It was an accurate reflection of at least some ways I think about human history and our present state of affairs. Problem is, how the hell do I follow up something like that?

While I might not know exactly what I’m going to write the next day when I work on my Matt Jacob novels, there are at least general parameters, an ongoing storyline and characters. So sitting down to write isn’t entering a dark tunnel bereft of ideas. In fact, (and I may have mentioned this before) I use a Hemingway device to help me along. Never stop writing at the end of a chapter, paragraph, or sentence. Makes it easier to get back into the flow. I also start each day editing from the very first sentence to the middle of the unfinished one. Takes a lot longer to write the book, but helps keep consistency of plot and tone as well as making certain that every single word has a purpose.

When I first began these posts, I discovered that my usual writing approach was useless since each of the columns were of a piece. And every piece was a stand-alone with rare exceptions. This was a totally new type of writing for me.

So when I opened the website and the Just sayin’ section, I made a conscious effort to think of subjects I could do justice to in about 800-1000 words. In the beginning there were a barrel full of ideas and issues I wanted to pursue. A couple of years later, ideas are not nearly as plentiful. This led to mixing in some fictional conversations and arguments and eventually creating my Interviews With The Dead.

I gotta tell you, I love working on that series. I know it isn’t feasible or even desirable to limit Just sayin’ to the Interviews With The Dead series, but doing them is really a lot of fun. I think about expanding the ones I’ve published and writing enough of them to turn them into an eBook. That’ll be a cool project, but the fourth Matt Jacob will come first.

Originally, I had planned to hit the publicity mill at full steam when the first three were up and for sale. Instead, I decided to wait until TIES THAT BLIND went up as well. The first three Matt Jacob novels had all been published in hard and softcover before they became eBooks, but TTB had never seen the light of day because I pulled it from the house when I left the legacy world. And it’s been waiting for a long time while I worked as a jury and litigation consultant.

It waits no more. Although I think it is the best of my novels, in order to bridge the time gap I’ve been making some significant revisions, one reason it has taken so long to publish as an eBook. And while I hope to have it up in a couple of months, a book (like any construction process) often has missed deadlines. Especially true for those that are self-imposed.

I’m enjoying the work but dread the day I have to turn my attention to slicing through the cacophony of the internet in the hope that the books will be bought and read. Not my strong suit but I will have some great help.

So what is this post really about other than sharing some tradecraft and future plans?

Honestly, it’s become a bridge to create some distance from last weeks’ column. It seemed ridiculous to simply find a story to write about, a book, movie, or play to review. (Though I have to admit that some of last weeks’ intensity had to do with watching an outstanding one man show of The Iliad. As one reviewer put it, not only were the Troy wars focused upon, but rather how wars in general just seem to be inevitable.)

I could have asked a guest columnist to stand in for me this week but I had to build this particular bridge since my mad has dissipated and I intend to reboot and begin fresh with next week’s post.

Who knows? I might even get summoned to interview another dead person.

How do I work? I grope. ~Albert Einstein

DECONSTRUCTION OF A POST

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I’d been having such a blast writing my INTERVIEWS WITH THE DEAD that I had begun considering using this space almost exclusively to develop and extend the form. Problem is, if I go by the number of readers who view Mondays’ posts, too many interviews too often, get boring. And the idea of boring is a writer’s worst nightmare. So I couldn’t put an interview on the docket for this week’s column.

Then what? This question usually pops up about twenty minutes after I’ve published my last post. I’m used to it and push the anxiety aside. I need the mind space to work on the fourth Matt Jacob book, TIES THAT BLIND. Also, if Mondays are publishing days, Tuesdays are music days. It takes me a fair amount of time to practice the sax, and prepare for my lesson and ensemble hours at MusicMakerStudios. That “performance” comes fully equipped with its own anxiety; what I lack in talent I try to make up for with work—which often isn’t terribly successful.

But Tuesdays are always fun days and nights, which is very much the calm before the storm. Wednesday morning, my Monday worries are in full bloom. This past week I struggled to engage, to find myself interested enough in a topic to write about. I thought about reviewing Hugo Chavez’s legacy, but everywhere I looked interesting articles about him–pro or con–were everywhere. I couldn’t imagine writing anything that could conceivably change anyone’s mind, so why bother? Felt like I’d be talking to myself.

I return to the newspaper and go through three days of ink but nothing jumps so I reconsider another interview. Desperation move, I think. Like I said, too much repetition makes for a drag. I tell myself I have plenty of time and that worrying won’t help my subconscious churn something out. After all, if an idea doesn’t come from current events, the arts, or other externals, it’s got to rise up from the deep. I’ve always believed that consciousness is the last stop for information, not the first—let’s hope it’s true this week.

Another two days pass and it’s Friday. The Northeast gets whacked with yet another snowstorm, while I pour over my copy of Baseball Prospectus, hungry for the season to begin. Ahh, an idea, perhaps? PLAY BALL!! A review of my Arizona trips to Spring Training? An analysis of the Red Sox? Uhh, I think not. Can’t imagine anyone interested in baseball after shoveling their cars out from another foot of snow. Even if the post is three days away. Around here, three days just means you’re no longer allowed to save your parking space with chairs or trash barrels.

Not a good idea to eliminate all my northeast readership. I just can’t count on Wyoming to flesh out the numbers.

Late Friday afternoon and head-banging time. The walls are moving closer and closer together and I’m scrambling to find a way out. I got to find a way to chill.

Break out the bourbon.

I’d like to say that one swallow opened the door but it didn’t. Two swallows though, cleared my mind enough to begin thinking. I considered a piece on Benedict’s abdication and the upcoming conclave. But we all know why Benedict really resigned and can only suspect which definition of damage control and conserving Empire the conclave will send up along with their white smoke.

It’s Saturday morning and too early for more alcohol.

Okay, Klein, you’ve been doing this for a couple of years now. You’re either all dried up or you ain’t thinking. I prefer the latter so I’m gonna either stare at a blank computer screen or beat this horse into talking. (Before animal advocates get too angry, the horse I’m talking about is me.)

The horse finally talked. “Write about the struggle you’re having this week with the column, but make it interesting!”

Damn horse sounded like Captain Pickard: “Make it so!” But in truth, the idea caught my fancy. Why shouldn’t you share my tsouris? Or, more writerly put, why not share my weekly process? This was an idea I could get behind. Just recount the truth. Write about the mishigas I go through every time I sit down to write my post. On top of which, this week was perfect since it was an “I got nothing” five days, a day of writing, then Sunday to turn this into a coherent article.

So here it is, my friends. A look inside my past week of writing—or nonwriting, as it were. I suppose I could finish by reciting various “Win one for the Gipper” homilies, but truth is, I’m left with only one head-scratcher: People want to know why writers drink?

You’re not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.— Dean Martin

An’ It’s 1-2-3 What Are We Writin’ For? -OR- Para-vice Lost

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A big thanks to Rawrahs from http://rawrahs.blogspot.com/ for starting the new year in a style and voice all his own. Please visit him regularly at the link above. You won’t regret it.  …Zach

Writers write. Different writers write for different reasons. And please, make no mistake, all writers are “different”. The moving writer writes and having writ moves on.

The objective measure of writing success is: Readers? Book sales? Technorati rating? A byline? A paycheck? Critical praise and acclaim? A movie deal? Being aggregated on Huff Po, The Daily Beast, The Great Orange Satan? A six-figure advance on your next work? A Pulitzer? A Newberry?

Where better than a writer’s blog to pose such questions? I’ve attained ONE of the above.

Is it purely money, compliments, and publicity by which we measure?

Biographer, columnist, comedian, composer, creator, dialogist, essayist, freelance, ghostwriter, hack, ink slinger, journalist, novelist, originator, playwright, poet, producer, prose writer, reporter, scribbler, scribe, scripter, speech writer, word slinger, wordsmith, word whore, words-for-hire, will write for food…

Does where one writes matter?
Does what?
Does when?
Who decides what words are seen?

If number of readers is the determinate, does that mean that David Fucking Brooks is a great writer? Any better than the graffiti artist whose work is seen daily, by millions? What about the shithouse poet?

For twenty bucks you can buy the paperback edition of Writer’s Market. For ten bucks you can get the Kindle version. Do you write first, then find a market or do you find a market then write for it? If a particular market is squat upon by a stable of nags who’ve been wrong about everything, by what dint do they continue to get paid to occupy their lofty writing aerie to spew out another thousand words of bullshit?

If one manages to infiltrate the villagers’ circle jerk, does one have to abide by the “say nae a bad word towards another villager” creed?

Is there a more dysfunctional career path than writing? …Anything one could do that is more soul-crushing? Anything more fickle?

Who do you read? How did you find them? I realize these are impolite questions, perhaps unanswerable even, yet I ask all the same.

Is there a hierarchy of writers? A club? A selection committee? A secret handshake?

You are here reading. You arrived, probably expecting to read Zach’s latest insight, but instead find me beebling on about this crap. I’d apologize, but that’s not much help to you, since it’s not particularly heartfelt.

It this occupation too diluted or too deluded?

If you’ve read this far, did you expect an answer? You know the answer for yourself, but how does that apply to those of us who construct words for your reading pleasure?

I look for answers in works that seem to attract readers and find little rhyme or reason beyond the mass-hysteria herd mentality. There isn’t much of a market for anything you don’t want to hear, regardless of how desperately you may need to hear it.

We read to escape. Does that mean that writers who can’t cater to the escapist market are trapped? I read many thousands upon thousands of words each day, and sometimes attempt to distill what I’ve read into a palatable quaff; trying to turn something distasteful or absurd into bite-sized, digestible nuggets. It’s a processing process that ingests, excludes; then extrudes.

I am about to start ingesting a compendium entitled “Deadline Artists” billed and touted as THE best of the absolute best in the fine columnist tradition. Wish me luck.

Should not our daily word-gruel contain a minimum RDA of useful nutrients. Our diet determines our fitness. I am Brussel Sprouts?