Category Archives: Writing

Mind Bumps

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I recently met (live) Sherri Frank Mazzotta, with whom I’ve been chatting about writing via the Internet.  As yet unpublished, she is incredibly accomplished and passionate about of all kinds of books and different styles of writing.  As much as I enjoy the Internet, email, and all the people I meet in cyberspace, I guess I’m the age where “there’s nothing like the real thing.”  We spent hours comfortably talking, not only about books, but our lives and how we got to where we are.  A cool do.

One question Sherri asked me is what it’s like to come up with an idea for every week’s post.  My response: nerve-wracking.  From the moment Monday passes, there’s a part of me anxious about whether a new subject will pop.  And the game has to come to me.  If I sit down to conjure up an idea it’s like telling someone to “be funny.”  Just doesn’t work.

This week it’s multiple “nexts” since no single thing jumped out front.  But over this week, like all others, I do stuff, ideas flit in (and most often out), some news report or column or cartoon catches my eye.

Let’s forget the straw poll in Iowa.  Crazies only interested me when I worked as a therapist.  So one of the most important things that occurred this week was my softball team (Jah Energy) won its one-or-done playoff game against the Loan Sharks.  It was a wet one; took place in a steady shower.  The game had been rained out twice before and there were no more permit dates for a makeup.  Maybe not on dry land, but ironically we were better than the Sharks in the water.

Now we play the first place team for two out of three beginning tomorrow evening—weather permitting.  Not gonna be easy.  Ron’s Auto consists of farbissina players, both men and women.  People who Lenny Bruce would describe as the type who wear wool suits with no underwear.  Needless to say, we are major underdogs.  I guess it will make winning that much sweeter–if we win.  I’ll let you know.

Also, something that caught my eye this week was a letter to the New York Times by Stephen Sondheim (http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/stephen-sondheim-takes-issue-with-plan-for-revamped-porgy-and-bess/) that tore Diane Paulus and Pulitzer Prize winner and McArthur Genius award recipient, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks new assholes for their re-interpretation of Porgy and Bess.  Paulus is the Artistic Director for American Repertory Theater, a prestigious theater company connected to Harvard University.  My ticket isn’t until the end of September, but what I find interesting is:

Diane Paulus.  Who receives an enormous amount of shit for her productions while, at the same time, filling seats with a large number of people who rarely, if ever, attend theater of any kind.  I understand why critics often have trouble with her work.  When you take Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, turn it into a disco, replete with roller blades and semi-nude actors dancing up a storm with the audience and call it The Donkey Show, it’s easy to understand why traditionalists have a difficult time seeing it as theater despite having its run extended for months.

Or when she invited the British Theater Company Punchdrunk to use an abandoned local school and turn Macbeth into Sleep No More, a production where all ticket holders wore masks to become anonymous as they wandered through the building from room to room where different scenes were played out.  Paulus caught it for that one too—Which also sold out and went on to be a must-have ticket in New York.

It’s odd that I find myself defending over-the-top theater since my favorite playwrights are Eugene O’Neill, Tom Stoppard, Arthur Miller and similar writers—as well as traditionally performed Shakespeare.  But there’s something to be said for introducing theater to a brand new audience and introducing it in a way we can all relax and have fun with.  Hats off to Diane Paulus for fucking with A.R.T.’s traditions and succeeding—despite the avalanche of criticism.  Me, I’m looking forward to Porgy And Bess.

This week I also found out we are definitely going to trial on September 8th in that same unnamed Midwestern state for the second of our two malpractice cases.  The defendant refuses to negotiate or mediate and I expect them to stay their course.  It’s a complicated case in a very conservative county where the defendant’s employer has their hands in damn near everything.

So it’s yet another David versus Goliath; this time Goliath has all the weapons except truth.  It will be interesting to see whether truth can win.  It often doesn’t in our civil court system where clout has a way of determining judicial decisions throughout a trial.  We can only hope a jury is able to separate the wheat from the chaff.  They’ve had practice since a good many of them will probably be farmers.  Again I’ll try to do frequent posts on the day-to-day once the trial begins.

And finally, my friend and artist, Michael Smith (check him out by clicking his links on my website’s ‘links’ page) came by Sunday morning to do a photo shoot of the cover for my digitalized version of Still Among The Living.  Spent a fair amount of time Saturday hunting for my old Bakelite radios and deco objects and art.  And finding someone with a gun permit and gun to bring to the “shoot.”

Well, that was my week.  How was yours?

“Life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.” – John Maxwell

(P)raising The Dead

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George Frazier (1911-1974) was an original.  And an occasional pioneer.  He was the first writer to have a jazz column in a major city newspaper when he authored Sweet and Low in the Boston Herald during the winter of 1942.  Eventually he moved on to a more wide ranging weekly column for The Boston Globe.  Although often derided and harshly criticized because of his totally politically incorrect positions on major issues (for example, Woman’s Liberation—though he did make it onto Nixon’s “enemy list.”), Frazier lives on in my memory primarily because of his ability to write scathingly, sarcastically beautiful prose.  And, more importantly, introduced me to the world of “duende.”

In his words:  “It’s not easy to explain…except to observe that when someone or something has it, we feel icy fingers running up and down our spine….it’s not measured in terms of surpassing skills…nor does it have anything to do with honor or integrity or valor…just as John Dillinger was all duende while the mafia, at least since Lucky Luciano is not…duende isn’t merely class, or just style either…yet I cannot offhand think of anyone who has duende who does not also have style…and to say that duende is merely charisma or panache or flair is rather to demean it, for while it is certainly all those things, it is the nth power of them.

In Frazier’s world Sinatra had it, but Joey Bishop most certainly did not.  Fred Astaire yes, Gene Kelly no.  According to Frazier, “It was what Ted Williams had even when striking out, but Stan Musial lacked when hitting a home run.”

Now there’s no doubt that duende is entirely subjective.  (Cardinal fans, for example, might turn Frazier’s quote on its head.)  But subjective or not, his columns struck a chord that remains as I think about duende in terms of people in my world–people I know or have met, some I’ve read about or seen on screen or in concert.

By now you undoubtedly know where I’m going with this.  Yep.  Paul Newman had duende but Robert Redford doesn’t.

Ghandi had it, Che didn’t.

I can’t quite decide whether Matt Damon has duende, but Ben Affleck doesn’t get close.

George Clooney has duende.

Morgan Freeman worked together with Clint Eastwood in three movies, but only Freeman has it, no matter how much Eastwood’s acting or directing are touted by the media. (Actually, in my opinion he only directed one really good movie:Unforgiven.  And, as much as I love jazz, Bird was an abomination.  Even his “Boston” movie, Mystic River, despite terrific actors, was blown away by Gone Baby Gone which incidentally was directed by Ben Affleck and also starred Morgan Freeman)

Lauren Hutton had and still has duende, but Heidi Klum with all her cheek-kissing “auf widersehens” won’t get there. (A shame since I have a picture of my son Matt with his arm around her at some function.  Or maybe the shame is that his armwasn’t around Hutton.)

Michael Moore reinvigorated documentary film making and I enjoy most of what he creates, but never in a million years will he have duende.  Neither will John Stewart or Bill Maher as quick on their feet as they are—after all, Stewart is gracious, classy and fun but doesn’t have it and however quick, clever, and political Maher might be, he is a bombastic twit.  But Stephan Colbert has duende.

As does Michelle Obama, while her husband, despite many attributes, simply does not.  (And I’m not saying that just because he dances like a white guy.)

Sometimes you can both have it and not.  Clarke Peters in his role as Lester in The Wire has duende.  But not as Albert Lambreaux in Treme.  Makes me wonder whether he has it as Clarke Peters.

John Lennon had duende but Paul McCartney, nah.

Susan, my partner has it, I don’t.

Obviously I could continue to traipse through the list of public figures, politicians, writers, actors, musicians (Wynton Marsalis has duende, Kenny G., ha! ) and singers (Billy Holliday had it as well as Sarah Vaughn, but not Ella) but this notion, this concept, this duende is in the eyes of the beholder.

What do your eyes tell you?

When people tell you how young you look, they are telling you how old you are.
Cary Grant

Where The Hell You Been?

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One of the questions people who comment here keep asking me is what I’ve been doing since I stopped writing about eighteen years ago.

To be honest, the first year after I pulled my fourth Matt Jacob manuscript from Random House was mostly spent on the couch, depressed, watching television (depressed enough to watch daytime tv as well).  I knew I didn’t want to return to my former work as a therapist, but had no inkling of what direction to take.  Not a real happy dance through the park.

Henry Miller once wrote (and I’m paraphrasing) that when you’re down to your last dime, you walk to the mailbox and, bingo, there’s a check.  (Were that to be true for most people.)

Well, I got lucky.  My friend Ron Simon, (and my blood brother) the lawyer who wrangled me ouf the the Random House contract, was the present in the mailbox.  He called and asked if I’d like to help with a trial he was doing for a man who died from liver failure due to workplace toxins at a uranium enrichment plant.  Even though I had no idea how I might be useful, I jumped on the offer and a plane and hightailed it to Piketon, Ohio, where the plant and trial were located.

It quickly became clear I had a fair amount to offer.  I helped write and rehearse the opening, taught  lay witnesses how to speak to jurors, even prepped some of our experts about the pitfalls of using “fancyspeak.”  But most importantly, I was allowed to sit in on jury selection, which was my first step toward becoming a competent profiler and jury consultant.

Although we lost the trial, we won the war.  Ron was able to work out a deal with the defendants that provided the widow with a substantial amount of money. (I have no idea how he pulled that off).  I still keep his widow’s thank-you letter tacked to my office wall.

Apparently I provided enough help for Ron to ask me to join his team as a “litigation consultant.”  I’m not sure whether the term even existed before, but it did now and I had enjoyed all the work and time in Piketon.

Thus began a great adventure that had me commuting from Boston to D.C. where Ron had his office.  At the same time I put in enormous time studying profiling and jury selection, areas i was most interested in and for which i could my lean on my background as a therapist.  I was excited by this new turn in life.

For my first few years as a “litigation consultant,” we worked on a number of local D.C. cases.  We won a wrongful death suit against the city–the deceased, an FBI agent shot by a man who wasn’t “wanded,” searched, or asked to walk through the metal detectors that were situated at the government building doorways where the female agent worked.  We also forced the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Area Transit Authority to repair a large number of poor people’s houses they had severely damaged while constructing three new subway stations in a low income neighborhood.  This situation had as much to do with community organizing (another part of my background from when I lived in Chicago) as it did with legal pressure and negotiations.

But the most poignant circumstance during those early years came when one of Ron’s closest friends’ son died in the passenger seat of a recklessly speeding car driven by his girlfriend who survived.  Initially the parents were intent on a wrongful death lawsuit, but Ron understood they were really looking for emotional closure rather than money.  We asked if they’d be willing to sit down with the other family and try to talk things out.  Eventually they agreed, but the presiding judge initially refused to let me handle the mediation since I had no standing with the court. Ron fought (furiously, as he usually does) pointing out my background as a therapist and someone who had mediated a fair number of divorces.  Finally the judge relented since, by then, both families wanted me to facilitate.

Which turned out to be a very long, sad, painful eight hours.  Hours where the anguish of losing a child, guilt about responsibility, rage, rationality, all had a turn at the podium.  I’m grateful to be able to say that when the day was finished, closure had begun to finally take place, and the lawsuit was dropped.  It was gratifying to watch family members holding hands on their way back to their cars.  To top it off, the judge apologized to me for his original stubbornness and said he wished he knew about me a few months earlier when his niece had died in a similar situation.  His family members were still going at it, long past the point mediation could even be suggested.

Somewhere around that time I realized I could put all my prior professional skills to work.  I’d had extensive training leading different type groups so I studied and began running focus groups for particular cases.  I also recognized that jurors anticipated participating in trials that were like what they saw on television.  Clear, everybody testifying in sequential order, the judge acting as a kindly father figure to whom they could turn for answers–most of which does not happen at a real civil trial.  But more importantly, jurors expected stories—and the classic story arc they have seen in movies and on television.

Well, I was a pretty good storyteller and began working not only with Ron’s firm, but other lawyers whose ethics I respected.  I began to teach how to structure cases in ways that not only told a story, but told it in a manner that allowed for normal trial disruptions and recesses.  Hell, I even had lawyers read books on how to write screenplays.

Frankly, it was a gas to fuse my previous careers and use them to further that which I believed in.  But even as I enjoyed the work, the good we were sometimes able to do, the relationships with both lawyers and clients, the unusual experiences (I spent six weeks investigating the Oklahoma City bombing one summer), I still missed the arts.  Which was why I began to learn to play the saxophone.  And now, at this juncture of my life, it’s close to time to move on again.

And this time the change is coming without the couch and the depression that came with it.

In today’s world I have the opportunity to control my books from the ground up and I intend to try.  I won’t completely leave my law work behind—I’ll always love running focus groups and helping prep people who are fighting the good fight–but my focus is turning toward writing.

But this time I’ll take my professional past along with me.  You can bet your ass that the coined concept, “litigation consultation” appears as a new expression, and that my work with Ron will somehow be woven into my new novels.

Genre As A Dirty Word

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When I first began reading fiction as a kid I never knew the word.  I was just happy to read The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Tom Swift and others of the same ilk.  (I read the second generation Swift books because the first were flat out racist and made me uncomfortable.)  In fact, I enjoyed these series so much I read and reread them and still have many ceremoniously sitting on the top of my mystery bookshelf.

Mystery bookshelf?  Why do I have one of those?  Or a science fiction bookshelf?  The same question is also relevant to my classics, modern, and non-fiction shelves.  Why aren’t they simply in alphabetical order by author?

For decades I read without even thinking of categories-let alone the word.  I was omnivorous.  I’d gobble The Foundation Series, chomp down on popular bestsellers like Hawaii or Exodus—I’d finish Hawaii and move on to Christopher Isherwood, Hemmingway, and Ursula K. Le Guin.  Later I’d go from Bukowski to Harry Crews to Bernard Malamud to The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (which I still imagine a great book and movie, though I haven’t revisited either in decades) to one of my all-time favorites Neuromancer.  In this sci-fi bullet train, William Gibson (known as the “Godfather of Cyberpunk”) chose not to explicate the world he creates but demands that you to buckle up and go for his ride trusting that you’ll get it.

Within all these mixes were sprinkled classics (a few), jags of nonfiction where I read everything I could find about one subject or another.  And, of course, tons of detective fiction by famous authors like Hammett, Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and the not so famous like Bart Spicer, Max Byrd, Brad Solomon, and Stephen Greenleaf.  (In one of these posts, I’ll dig more deeply into detective fiction authors and their influences on my books.  Though it might take a while since, at the moment, I haven’t much of a clue.)

Until I began my own writing career I never really gave the word much thought.  Though, by that time I was in my 40’s, and finally realized that genre was somehow less than literature, despite a definition that is not particularly pejorative.  “A category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter.”

Benign enough.  But definitions don’t always marry reality.  Is a symphony inferior to a quartet?  Most wouldn’t think so.  Is rock music inferior to classical?  Hmmm, now the critics start yammering.  And if you translate this to literary equivalents, you’d have the same arguments.  Or at least quietly smug, smirky looks.  Genre books are always considered a lower rung on the writing ladder.

So I began to wonder why I was choosing detective fiction which, though elastic, really fits the word’s definition.  Was I afraid to stare at a blank computer screen without any structure to serve as a safety net?  Did I consider myself less a writer than those who strive to write “literary” novels?

For a while there, the questions kicked up a real block.  But then I reread Red Harvest and realized that if I could tell a story halfway as well as Hammitt, I would be lucky.  I picked up The Long Goodbye and decided that if I could pen sentences as descriptive as Chandler, I didn’t give a shit what my books were called.

And then I took it further.  If I were going to be labeled a genre writer, I was going to do everything possible to stretch the boundaries.  Sure, I’d use a generalized detective fiction structure where plot was important, but the heart of what I was writing about had to do with relationships, characters and their interactions.  Themes.  Those were important to me and would be at the heart of every book I’d write.

It also didn’t escape my attention that relationships, characters and their interactions are the meat and potatoes of every novel.  Which brought me to the point where I am now.  A novel that contains these ingredients, that explores them intimately, that is written well, that reveals something to its reader, and makes the reader feel–that’s a good book.  And if the author does enough of it beautifully, it’s a great book.  No matter its classification.

But it’s a funny world we live in.  People feel a need to categorize damn near everything.  During my last literary go-round, I repeatedly heard I wrote “airplane books” or “beach reads,” that is, books to toss once you finished ’em.  It usually wasn’t meant to be mean; ironically it often came on the heels of people telling me how much they enjoyed one of them.  But truthfully, despite my stalwart belief mentioned above, it used to bother me, made me angry or sad.

I can’t say whether I succeeded with my goals in my previous Matt Jacob books, or whether I’ll succeed when I write him out of retirement.  And while Matt and I are much older now, with eyes that look upon the world with a different perspective, both of us still think our hearts are in the same place about the interpersonal issues I care about.  And we both agree those issues will always be the guts of my books.

But while writing the Matt Jacob books, I learned something I had never before realized.  No matter the genre, whether it’s a bad book, or one that wasn’t even published, I have huge respect for anyone who takes the time and effort to write a complete beginning, middle, and end.

It really is that hard.

“A bad book is as much a labour to write as a good one, it comes as
sincerely from the author’s soul.” Aldous Huxley

Writing From The Heart

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I received a ton of feedback on line and off about “A Marriage Passed.”  Each one was encouraging and lovely, and I very much appreciate the time and effort people took to comment-thank you.

One thing that struck me was that many called the piece “writing from the heart” and urged me to continue to do so. I think what that meant was the degree of emotional honesty came through as clearly as the content.  And that was true.  Yet, my posts have generally been “from the heart.”  Okay, not the television one where I was having some fun.  Or the “Harbingers of Spring,” in which I rued Boston’s weather (well, maybe).  But my post about “Israeli Regime Change,” or “The Obama Conundrum,” and even the Dylan/Ochs conversation were reflections of deeply held beliefs-though written in differing styles and forms.

And while I appreciated last week’s comments and feedback, truth is, I started this site as a road back to a kind of writing, which is of my heart.

It began with the intent of shaking the rust off due to an eighteen year hiatus.  I chose nonfiction posts because it was something I’d never done.  I hoped the newness would both jack me out of silence and broaden my skills.  So far it’s done both and, while I enjoy the freedom to pick different topics, love the response to my pieces, enjoy the arguments they occasionally provoke, I still miss the hell out of writing fiction.

I miss the freedom to play inside my imagination.  I miss the people I create.  I miss hearing the different voices inside my head and the unique personalities that eventually emerge.

I guess writing novels is my safe way of experimenting with multiple personality disorder.

I’m also hungry for the interpersonal interactions and relationships in which my people engage.  I don’t miss plotting but that comes with the package and there’s simply no way to avoid it–especially since I intend a return to detective fiction.

(Excuse me while I momentarily extemporize.  It was no accident that I took up the saxophone when I walked away from writing. I liken detective fiction to jazz for a number of reasons.  For one, jazz is an indigenous American art form and I believe the same about hard-boiled.  Just as jazz upends traditional songs, it’s rewarding to create variations on the hard-boiled historical structure which, while maintaining the form, also changes it.  Most of all it’s a gift to follow in the footsteps of novelists like Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Bart Spicer and Ross Thomas.  (Someday I’ll share a more complete list of the “greats” in this space.)

I walked away from publishing after several censorship battles with a major house–and thought I was done forever.  But this new age of communications has given me another shot.  Right now I’m converting three out-of-print Matt Jacob books (along with the fourth I took with me when I walked) into eBooks, which I will control.  That was my thinking when I started the whole project, but in the course of creating this space I’ve decided to bring Matt Jacob out of retirement.  I’ll begin a new novel once the earlier ones are up and running.  Frankly, the idea of playing with that eighteen-year gap tickles me.  And while I don’t imagine my older voice will be the same, (hell I haven’t stayed the same for the past eighteen and certainly my voice hasn’t), I’ll try to write books that reflect the realness of life and relationships, much as I tried to do before.

So what does this have to do with writing from the heart?  I suppose the connection is that I have to follow my heart in order to write from it.

At the same time I have no intention to give up these posts.  I’ve discovered the pleasure of stretching my abilities and have thoroughly enjoyed the reactions to the different columns.  And most importantly, there are cultural, social, political, artistic and personal issues that intrigue me and I intend to explore.

Although most of my posts won’t be about loved ones, they will be honest and often “written from the heart.”

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any. -Mahatma Gandhi