10 Years After

Where I live, the events of 9/11 were not just images on a television or messages of heartfelt sadness. They were those things, of course, but they were also a motorcade of funerals, a stream of floral arrangements, a vital Thanksgiving meal months later. That day led to random moments of pain and sadness when otherwise meaningless things were noticed to be missing. And it also led to phone calls from people whose voices had almost been forgotten, calling..."just because, well, it's been a while, you know?" and we knew.

For me, 9/11 was highly personal for reasons I won't get into here. But it changed things in me about my writing, about what I wanted to accomplish and be remembered for: Writers write.

Those who know me personally or even merely from random lines in places like AgentQuery Connect or From the Write Angle or via Twitter probably get a sense that I like to joke around. Often, I joke because I take most of life so seriously — sometimes too seriously, perhaps. After 9/11 I took my manuscript very seriously. It had been mostly notes before that day. Maybe a few dozen pages of tripe were written. I don't think any of it survives except for its setting. My story took place in Hoboken, New Jersey, which is just across the river from New York City. The attacks were a point of demarcation unlike any other in my lifetime and I needed to decide when my story took place.

I decided that it was to be a year in the life of a family: From 9/10/00 to 9/10/01. I wrote nightly for months and most of that ended up on the cutting room floor, so to speak. It was my first serious attempt at a novel, and I made the mistakes that most writers make on such efforts. Too much back story, too many details that don't matter. I ended up putting it aside for months and working on other things. Short stories, mostly. A lot of freelance assignments. Some of which I'm proud of.

Eventually, I went back to my story, took it apart piece by piece, and started to build again. Perhaps too subtly, I wove 9/11 into the manuscript. It's there, but the story takes place before the events, so it must be done with care. I've had people tell me to change the date of the story or to make it more apparent. And I still think about it. The manuscript still has elements I'm uncertain about, and I've put it aside several times to work on other projects and let my mind work through those elements and help me decide if they're flaws or just need a bit more polishing.

By the time the polishing is done and it goes off to agents, I suspect I'll have come close to finishing another manuscript and several other short stories and a bunch more articles I'm proud of. But this story is one that will be with me forever, whether it gets published or not.

In a sense, it will be part of my personal 9/11 legacy. If nothing else, I have that.

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Novelist

As a runner, a writer, and a fan of Haruki Murakami, I was pleased to find an essay he wrote for The New Yorker. I've only read a smattering of Murakami's work -- The Elephant Vanishes and perhaps a couple stray stories from other collections. One of the things I like about his characters is that they come across as people I can relate to despite my being an American; Murakami is Japanese. I don't know if that means the image of the average middle-class, suburban male is universal or that I naturally gravitate to such characters. Not every personality trait needs to be over analyzed.

But even in this essay, I find myself rooting for the guy, as though Murakami is one of his own invented characters (though, aren't we all...).

As a casual Murakami reader, I wasn't aware of his personal history. For example, I didn't know he just kind of fell into writing one day, literally at the moment a baseball player hit a shot down the line. (Again, something I can relate to.) I had no idea that he used to run a jazz club, nor that he became a runner. He describes himself as a natural runner, despite not really being much of an athlete. It came relatively easy to him, though he had to give up smoking and build his endurance; he's since completed several marathons.

One of the points he made that struck a particular chord was his observation that, when he was running a bar, his goal was that 10 percent of a night's customers should be or become regulars -- an approach he took to his writing as well. Such a simple model, yet probably a difficult goal to attain. Do stock investors expect a 10 percent return? I don't know. Maybe that's why I'm not much of an investor.

I hope I can generate that type of return -- and not feel guilty or like failure for the 90 percent of readers who think I'm full of crap. I think Murakami's model provides the proper perspective to writing, and to running.

The Writing Life of the "Successful" Author

The Boston Globe recently ran a story about author Leah Hager Cohen. It has become rare to find an article about someone who's basically a mid-list writer. By her own admission, Cohen is not making a lot of money writing both novels and nonfiction. She may have to start teaching to make ends meet, she said. Frankly, that doesn't sound so bad to me, but I'm sure she'd prefer to be able to write on her usual schedule. The article also describes what to me sounds like a dream relationship with an agent: the agent pushed her but was honest, perhaps also blunt.

This article is also another example of why it's important for newspapers -- especially major ones like the Globe -- to continue to cover writers and books. While there are tons of Web sites and blogs out there that talk about writers no one in the "mainstream" world has ever heard of, when a New York Times, LA Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, or any of the other important U.S. newspapers include stories about authors other than Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, John Grisham, or any of the instantly recognizable, commercial writers, it helps all of us who aspire to get their works published and to believe there will be avenues of distribution for us too.

Keep writing, Ms. Cohen, and if you have to teach, then do it. Because that's one more way of developing writers and readers. Those kids will go off to college and talk about the quirky English teacher they had who had a few books published. The audience can keep growing one commuter at a time.

The Pornographer by John McGahern

Anyone looking for page after page of pornography will be disappointed, though there are certainly a few sex scenes in John McGahern’s The Pornographer. The story is about a young man who writes the traveling sexual escapades of Mavis and the Colonel in Ireland, but the thrust of the story is the relationship between him and a thirty-eight year old woman he gets pregnant. She wants to keep the baby, and he wants nothing to do with it and soon wants very little to do with her.

From a traditional moral standpoint (whatever that means) the title character has very little redeeming quality. Not only does he make his living by writing about wanton sex, but he seems to have no interest in new life; what’s around him already is all he needs. But this book is filled with opposites. He shows devotion and tenderness to his aunt Josephine, who is dying. He cares about his uncle, who runs a mill and buys farm land. Josephine’s husband Cyril, whom the lead doesn’t particularly like, has become a drunk and wants nothing to do with his wife, but she leaves everything to him. The pornographer brings a bottle of brandy to his aunt each time he visits her in the hospital, because it’s the only thing that she thinks is helping her.

As tender as he is with Josephine, he is as subtle as a hand job in his relationship with the woman he impregnates. Though she was thirty-eight, she had almost no sexual experience until she meets the pornographer in a dance club. Though initially reluctant, she acquiesces to his advances, but she doesn’t allow him to use condoms, explaining that she’s as regular as clockwork. When she becomes pregnant, he initially tells her that he’ll marry her, but his intention is to leave her once she’s had the child. He tells her he doesn’t love her and likely won’t love her. But she expects that once he sees the child, once he recognizes this change in his life, he’ll marry her.

I can’t say I particularly liked either of the main characters. No matter how many times the pregnant woman said he and she were “good people,” I was left unconvinced. She wanted to change a man who was not ready for change, he was a selfish pig. But neither can be said to have “no redeeming qualities.” She is capable of much love, despite her inexperience. She truly seems to love this man; he truly doesn’t deserve her. And the character a reader might best relate to is the pornographic publisher; he is the one who says the writer deserves to get his ass kicked – which eventually happens. He’s getting through this unsavory situation too easily. But even the publisher has his eccentricities, such as a dream of a baby stroller decked out as a coffin.

In the end, the pornographer has buried his aunt. And, having had another affair with one of his aunt’s nurses, he begins to change his opinion of his future. His uncles are moving forward with their lives. The new mother has overhauled her life due to him. And as the story closes, the pornographer begins to see new possibilities.

It’s the first book I’ve read by McGahern, who died this past March, and I don’t recall reading any of his short stories, though he’s highly regarded in that form. It’s a special talent to create characters that are both despicable and believable. I expect I’ll read him again.