Reading and Writing in San Miguel

I finished reading Carolyn Cassady's Off the Road and wow, did she put up with a lot of crap from Neal, mostly philandering but also drugs, gambling, jail, etc. And catching Allen Ginsberg blowing her husband. But she was no angel either: she was having an affair with Jack Kerouac while he stayed in the attic of their house.

It sort of amazing how intimately intertwined Kerouac, Cassady and Ginsberg's lives were.

I came to SMA to do a final edit on my novel. I got about halfway through it, did some good work, but got distracted with drinking, carousing, playing basketball, yoga, and life. I do think I've got the final solution for the ending chapters, thanks to a local 'advance reader.'

My new friend Roman is suggesting I do an Eastern European book tour, and the idea has grabbed me, so I've done some quick research and found the prominent English language bookshops over there. Roman says that they are hungry for American writers, to hear about American politics and views, so it'd be a more special trip than just doing an American tour. And it would be an unforgettable experience!

Neal Cassady and the Beats

Last Saturday evening in San Miguel de Allende I attended a celebration of the Beat poets. Neal Cassady, the catalyst who changed the direction of Jack Kerouac's writing -- to the more free flowing, stream of consciousness Beat style -- breathed his last breath here. He'd been to a wedding and probably took some downers that night, where he expired by the railroad tracks.

His son, John Allen Cassady, was named for Cassady's two best friends, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Kerouac's first name was actually Jean, pronounced almost like 'John' -- so why didn't he name him "Jack Allen Cassady" you ask? Well, Neal Cassady said, "If you say Jack Cassady fast, it sounds like Jackass-ady; and no one is going to call my son a jackass!" John Allen Cassady, who is now in his late 50s, returned to grace the local literary group with some funny stories of his father, who died when John Cassady was just 16.

The evening began with a couple of speakers providing a summary of the history of the Beats, and particularly the development of their friendship and writing, and their ventures to Mexico.

"Don't do what I did, 20 years of fast-living and my kids are all screwed up," Neal Cassady had said. But his son, John, a blond-haired man with a beard, bushy eyebrows and a sunny disposition, has nothing but fond and humorous memories of his father. When I asked him about what his father had said about screwing up his kids, John said, 'Well, my dad was very protective. He cared for us very much."

John Cassady went on to talk about the funny things his father did to entertain the kids, and how he never said an unkind thing to them -- or anyone else. On one trip to Mexico he brought back a small wooden pig that had a removable plug for a tail. "Watch this!" Neal said to his kids. He went and got a flyswatter, and swatted a fly, not killing it, but just stunning the fly. Then he pulled the tail-plug from the little toy pig, inserted the dazed fly and replaced the tail. As the fly came to, the pig's legs started to move and soon it was dancing on the table. The kids were delighted! John said, "That was funny, but what's even funnier is, 'Who is the Mexican who thought of this in the first place!?'"

John's mother, Carolyn, was left to be the disciplinarian. You'd think that a kid who smoked mota with his father and accompanied him to the bars while still in elementary school would be all messed up. But John Cassady is a happy man, a shining, jovial light who is and always was, very proud of his parents.

I approached John after dinner with his mother's book, Off the Road: Twenty Years with Cassady, Kerouac & Ginsberg. Before he signed it for me, he flipped to a picture of his dad in his prime and said, "Look at my dad. Look what a handsome devil he was!" Then he flipped to his mother's 1946 picture, a stunning profile of a classic blonde, and commented boyishly, "Look at how beautiful my mom was!" John was supposed to be shuffled off to speak on the closing panel, and the event organizers were getting impatient, so I took a picture of John signing my book, we shook hands and I left, treasuring the moment.

Seriously, John had the experience of learning the guitar from Jerry Garcia (Garcia credited Cassady for the formation of the Grateful Dead), he knew Kerouac and Ginsberg as his father's friends, so how cool is that? In one aside, John said that Garcia told him as a teenager not to use a certain album as a guide to the Grateful Dead's music style, "We were speeding and played the whole thing in triple time!"

Also speaking that evening was George Walker, one of the Merry Pranksters whose nickname was "Hardly Visible." He's a colorful man, wearing bright hippie colors topped by a knit skullcap, and he had some colorful stories about LSD-laced cross-country bus rides and wild trips to Mexico. Mostly the stories had to do with getting high, having fun, and barely escaping the Mexican police!

Literary Serendipity

A couple of days ago I was at my friend's restaurant in Playas de Tijuana, sitting outside, drinking a cold Tecate draft beer and watching the sunset. I like to make it a point to watch sunsets over the ocean. It gives me some sort of vital energy and inspiration. There was only one other customer there, and he was inside under the palapa roof where it is nice, but there isn't a view. The man looked like a dead ringer for a younger Francis Ford Coppola, with a bushy beard, and mad, creative eyes.

As the sun began to set the man came out by my table and we both were watching the sunset. "Do you mind if I sit here with you?" he asked in a thick Eastern European accent. So we sat in silence and then he said, "Isn't it amazing, isn't it wonderful that we as humans are drawn to the beauty of nature? And that each sunset is unique?"

Marveling at the natural beauty before us we began to chat. I told him I am a writer. "Published?" he asked.
"Yes." And I went on to describe my books, then asked him where he was from.
"Croatia," he replied.
"Oh, there have some good basketball players that come from over there, don't they?" I asked.
"They used to," he replied.
"What is your name?" I asked.
"Roman."

He had lived in Rio de Janeiro and he told me that the women there were beyond the most beautiful women you have ever seen: even better than Cuban beauties. "And they fall in love with you, right away!" About ten minutes into the conversation he said, "I am a writer, and I am published too -- just not in English. This is my problem: I can speak it but I do not know the grammar very well. But I have a screenplay and I am working with the most powerful screenwriter in Hollywood. He is behind many major movie projects."

Roman told me he used to be a millionaire in the computer business in New York City until "they stole it from me" and he ended up homeless. Down and out, he wrote to the noted screenwriter and he replied. Roman ended up scraping up enough to come out to the West Coast and the noted screenwriter critiqued his screenplay, ripping it to shreds.

"He told me to get rid of my main character! I couldn't believe it!" Roman cried.

We talked about how that feels when someone gives you a stinging critique and at first you resent it deeply -- it just pisses you off. It's like someone telling you that your kid is stupid and ugly.

But then, if you really, really think you begin to realize that person did you a great favor, and they were right. And you can start the re-write and make the script much better than before. That's what F. Ray Mouton (Pamplona) did for me last year when I thought I was done with my novel. He did the same thing a few years ago with my "Brando" play, and ultimately, he was dead on and I was spurred to greater heights.

Roman then stopped the conversation and said, "Excuse me, I just want to catch the last of this sunset." Of course, I did too.

So we sat in silence and admired the glorious last rays settle over the expanse of the sea.

Walking home I thought, "It's not every day that you meet a Croatian screenwriter in Mexico."

What Freaked Out Dostoevsky

Some great writers have been driven to their craft with gale force passion due to some extraordinary event. In Dostoevsky's case, it was a near death experience so terrifying it would color his writing throughout his career.

It wasn't his first seizure at the age of nine; it wasn't the death of his mother or his violently alcoholic father two years later, but rather, after he had begun his brilliant literary career Fyodor Dostoevsky and others in the liberal intellectual group, the Petrashevsky Circle, were imprisoned and then one day everything changed: they were condemned to be shot at seven o'clock in the morning of December 22, 1849.

Dostoevsky was marched out naked in the cold with twenty others and they were read the fatal words, "Sentenced to be shot!" After twenty minutes in the cold he embraced two of his friends in a final farewell. He wrote of his "last" moment, "I kept staring at a church with a gilt dome reflecting the sunbeams and I suddenly felt as if these beams came from the region where I myself was going to be in a few minutes."

But shockingly an officer ran into the square and announced that Tsar Nicholas I "in his infinite mercy" had commuted the death sentence to prison terms in Siberia. So Dostoevsky survived it but his colleagues didn't fare so well, as one became insane, some had frostbite, and others contracted fatal diseases or had nervous breakdowns.

The lives of writers today aren't nearly as challenging or strife-ridden. Most sit at their comfortable desk, in a comfortable chair churning out manufactured tales according to established formulas. This is a loss, a loss for the world, for those who take a risk and venture out to experiment with words or ideas are little appreciated and even snubbed.

Remembering Barber Bancroft

Obama was elected yesterday marking a new dawn for America. And that is a good thing. It not only raises the hopes of all American children, but the entire world.

Sadly, though, today is the fourth anniversary of the death of my good friend, Barber Bancroft. That morning, November 5th, 2004, he went to teach his eight o'clock English class at Auburn University. In ten minutes, while writing on the blackboard he said, "Oh, my God..." and his students thought he was beginning to recite a poem. Then he slumped on the floor, dead of a massive heart attack at 48.

He had written five novels but had not published any of them. I urged him to concentrate more on the business side of things and he urged me to concentrate more on my writing. We had come from two different worlds but I knew we would always be friends.

Here's what I wrote at the time:

"I met Barber over drinks at Monaghan's Erin Irish Rose pub in the French Quarter (see pic above - that's him smiling across the bar). He was a native Southerner teaching English at Auburn University and would come to New Orleans to get away and work on his novels. We had two things in common: drinking and writing, and we wiled away the hours talking, laughing, arguing and sipping.

The first time I met him he loaned me a book of short stories by Carson McCullers. I read it that night and met him the following day to return it, but he insisted I keep it. We talked about her incredible prose. We argued over Faulkner, Hemingway and the rest. He gave me lists of books to read and movies to see. Then he offered to read and critique a manuscript of mine, telling me it was "very kind" of me to allow him to do so.

Of course, I thought the reverse.

We swapped manuscripts a couple of times over the next two years. Although I'd never had a writing class, he was never condescending. If you wanted to learn, he would teach. And he was just as eager to learn from you. When we weren't discussing serious things, we were laughing most of the time. He was the one who came up with the name for my debut novel, "Jackson Squared."

One of the last things he told me was to read (Russian author) Dostoyevsky. A few weeks later, on another fateful Saturday, his wife called to say he'd collapsed and died doing what he loved most: teaching a class. My heart sunk into my belly and began to ache, as I gazed out over the carefree tourists from my French Quarter balcony.

I am grateful that he came into my life, and I will press on, missing him every day - and the world will too."

Here's what Stacy Jones, one of his students from a writing retreat wrote (on Southern-Drawl.com):

On a Sunday afternoon in June 2004, I arrive at the Hambidge Center, a retreat for artists and writers in the mountains of North Georgia. A small group of people—fiction writers, nonfiction writers, and poets alike—are gathered at this place to meet other like-minded individuals and to hone their respective crafts in workshops during the week.

After I take a seat near the back for the opening remarks, I notice only a handful of men present. Two of them stand out. Both look to be in their late 30s or early 40s; one black and the other white. The black man sports dreadlocks and the white man has pulled his dark hair into a ponytail that hangs down his back...

The man with the dark ponytail is Barber Bancroft. He teaches English at Auburn University and is a novelist. I come to know him because he is my fiction teacher. He ends up in a classroom with five females: me and two other twenty-somethings, a woman in her 50s, and another woman in her 70s....

After we return to the Hambidge Center, Barber invites the three of us to his studio. We sit talking about writing and life well into the night, listening to Barber's blues CDs...

After I have been accepted into the MFA program in fiction writing at The University of Memphis, I e-mail Barber to let him know, considering how he was so encouraging to me, and I tell him he is one of the best fiction teachers I have ever had.

He writes back to thank and congratulate me. Then he signs off by offering what may well be the most simple but important writing advice I have ever received: "Don't stop thinking about it. Keep filling up the pages."

...I wondered, too, if Barber would be teaching any workshops this summer, so I looked online to find his contact information at Auburn. The first thing I located, however, was an article in the "Auburn Plainsman," the campus newspaper, the headline of which read, "English Teacher Dies at 48."

Accordingly, on the morning of last November 5, Barber had just started teaching his 8 a.m. world literature class. At 8:10, he collapsed, and although his students tried to save him by doing CPR, he was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.

I then found his obituary, which began, "William Barber Bancroft, of Auburn, born Aug. 9, 1956, died Nov. 5, 2004. The Lord took him home to be with Him while teaching his World Literature class at Auburn University."

There was no explanation for his death. He evidently went into cardiac arrest and died. When I last saw him, he looked healthy. It was scary to think that anyone, absolutely anyone, could share a similar fate. I'm sure the day seemed to Barber like any other; he didn't know he was going to die when he went to teach that morning.

And in that moment everything felt full circle: here, again, more than ever, surged the lesson of not waiting until it is too late.

A Day with F. Scott Fitzgerald and "Gatsby"

Yesterday I walked to a small Mexican cafe and had "huevos Mexicana" with beans and potatoes, sitting next to two Mexican police. I had a book with me so I figured they'd think me harmless.

Then I walked to the local coffee shop and and read a couple of chapters of "The Great Gatsby," by F. Scott Fitzgerald (he was named after his famous relative, Francis Scott Key, who wrote the words to "The Star-Spangled Banner," but he was called only "Scott"). Turning each page I was just awed by his lyrical prose. It's so deft and smart and pleasant to read that "lyrical prose" doesn't do it justice. And Fitzgerald wrote this in his twenties! He died at 44 and I just kept thinking how far behind I am, how I will never catch up, and how, maybe, I should just forget about writing at all.

Walking home I thought that if I work at it hard, things will be different in 10 years.

Most people don't know that Fitzgerald lived in New Orleans for a while. In 1920, he took a room at a cheap boarding house on Prytania Street, in the historic and grandiose Garden District. With $600 from winning the O. Henry Prize (by the way, short story writer O. Henry fled to New Orleans to avoid embezzlement charges from a bank in Texas) he bought his future wife Zelda a platinum and diamond watch and went to Montgomery to propose. But she wouldn't marry him until, "This Side of Paradise" was published the following spring.

Fitzgerald and Hemingway were ex-pat friends in Paris, and Hem had great respect for Scott's writing. But they argued, as writers do. I heard a story that after Fitzgerald wrote a long written critique of a new Hemingway novel, Hem scrawled, "Kiss my ass," after it. But I'll bet he re-read the critique and took it to heart and improved his writing.

Later Hem wrote elegantly about how natural and effortless Fitzgerald's talent was. He wrote this in the preface to, "A Moveable Feast" one of my all-time favorite books:

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.

Fitzgerald was destroyed by drink and his crazy wife Zelda, who was in and out of mental institutions, and who encouraged him to drink and write short stories for fast money, rather than to focus on novels (a source of contention between Hem and Scott). Zelda was a Southern Belle, the daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge, but a real firecracker who later was recognized as a leader for women's rights. Scott called her the"golden girl," and "the original flapper."

Scott and Zelda were always drinking and fighting. Tennessee Williams wrote the play, "Clothes for a Summer Hotel," about Scott and Zelda's tumultuous relationship. It takes place when Scott takes a visit to see Zelda at a mental institution in North Carolina, where she later burned to death after Fitzgerald's untimely death of a heart attack. It was Tennessee's last play to debut on Broadway but was a critical and financial failure (although it sounds interesting, doesn't it?)


Back to my day: After a stop at the grocery, and few glances from Mexican housewives, I walked home and took a short nap.

My neighbor, a defrocked lawyer (who is just another one of the miscreants who have landed in Tijuana), stopped by and brought a quart of beer so we split it. We talked about how he's been working hard on his Spanish and meeting a lot of girls and that I should learn more, and he taught me a new word. Then we talked about how crazy it is that they caught the leader of the big drug cartel, and that 150 people had been killed in TJ in the last 2 months. But that it doesn't affect us here at the beach. In fact, it doesn't affect anyone unless they are in the drug or police business, except that fewer people go out to nice restaurants after a recent slaughter (of drug runners) at one.

He headed back to cook dinner for his roommate, and I went over to the local seafood restaurant to watch the sun set over the ocean and return to "Gatsby." I read while I drank a few more Tecate beers and ate three shrimp tacos. I didn't bother with telling them that I prefer them not to be fried, since I was pretty hungry. I read as much as I could, between glimpses of the salmon-pink sunset and shimmering waves, and then I just closed the book and thought.

After a short stop at home I walked up to a little smoky dive bar, had a couple more beers with limes, ate some peanuts and looked over at the two incredibly cute and young senoritas.

"I really gotta learn Spanish," I thought.

Leaving Las Vegas--and Hunter S. Thompson

Last week I was in Vegas. I could've been anywhere, since I didn't do much of the Vegas scene, except for the free drinks at Happy Hour and the one-armed bandit at the airport. But whenever I'm in Vegas I think of Hunter Thompson, you know, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

My take: Hunter wrote a few wild, all-out "gonzo" books early on, then he named everything, "Fear and Loathing xxx" after that. Sort of took the originality out of it. But he does get credit for pioneering the term and style, Gonzo journalism.

When things were good in New Orleans, before Katrina around the end of 2004, Hunter was there and went for drinks with his "literary executor" Doug Brinkley, at Lucky's Bar on St. Charles Avenue. Lucky's is a 24-hour dive with a pool table, fried food, and a new bartender every other week. I've spent many a night there, but usually I was at Igor's or Avenue Pub up the street. Lucky's is certainly a misnomer, since it's usually half-full of losers (other than that night I spent with a talented Cajun gal who lived upstairs).

Brinkley was a New Orleans writer, known as a very serious sort, even if he did migrate to Houston by way of Rice University. I've met Doug a few times at New Orleans literary events, before he made a million bucks on his Katrina book. I even sent him an advance copy of my manuscript (for a blurb) not knowing he was penning his own story. He was teaching at U. of New Orleans, evacuated to Houston and then taught at Tulane for a year or so. He's a very busy guy, and he cranks out books and spits out facts like a machine.

This comes from Wikipedia:

During the early 1990s, Brinkley taught American Arts and Politics out of Hofstra University aboard the Majic Bus, a roving, transcontinental classroom, from which emerged the book, The Majic Bus: an American Odyssey, published in 1993. In 1993, he left Hofstra University to teach at the University of New Orleans and taught this class again, using a natural-gas bus. He also worked with Stephen Ambrose, then Director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans. Ambrose chose Brinkley to become Director of the Eisenhower Center for five years before going to Tulane.

Brinkley is the literary executor for his friend, the journalist Hunter S. Thompson. He is also the editor of a three-volume collection of Thompson's letters:

• Volume 1: The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967. Published April 7, 1998.
• Volume 2: Fear And Loathing In America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist. Published December 13, 2000.
• Volume 3: The Mutineer: Rants, Ravings, and Missives from the Mountaintop, 1977-2005. Schedule delayed until February, 2009.

As well, Brinkley is the authorized biographer for Beat generation author Jack Kerouac, having edited Kerouac's diaries as Windblown World. He has also written profiles of Kurt Vonnegut^[9], Norman Mailer, and Ken Kesey for Rolling Stone Magazine.

Anyway, Brinkley invited Andrei Codrescu to come along to Lucky's, and as Andrei tells it, Hunter Thompson's utterances that night were barely understandable, then a couple of months later he blew his own brains out declaring that he'd lived "17 years past 50" and that was long enough. He never wanted to be that old. I'm just hoping to make it there (next year).

As a Tijuana ex-pat who runs a cancer clinic (one of many) tells it, they propped up Hunter for one last party before his cremation. I doubt that, since he was in pieces by then, but then again, this guy cures cancer. Oh, late note--the clinic closed last week since the founder has dementia.

But Brinkley tells the story of Thompson's funeral elegantly in an article for Rolling Stone, which is a great tribute:

Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men's reality. Weird heroes and mold-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of "the rat race" is not yet final.
-- HUNTER S. THOMPSON, 1937-2005

February was always the cruelest month for Hunter S. Thompson. An avid NFL fan, Hunter traditionally embraced the Super Bowl in January as the high-water mark of his year. February, by contrast, was doldrums time. Nothing but monstrous blizzards, bad colds and the lackluster Denver Nuggets. This past February, with his health failing, Hunter was even more glum than usual. "This child's getting old," he muttered with stark regularity, an old-timey refrain that mountainmen used to utter when their trailblazing days were over. Depressed and in physical pain from hip-replacement surgery, he started talking openly about suicide, polishing his .45-caliber pistol, his weapon of choice. He was trying to muster the courage to end it all.

Then, on February 16th, Hunter decided to leave a goodbye note. Scrawled in black marker, it was appropriately titled "Football Season Is Over." Although he left the grim missive for Anita, his young wife, Hunter was really talking to himself. Here, published for the first time, are perhaps his final written words:

No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun -- for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax -- This won't hurt.

At the bottom of the page, Hunter drew a happy heart, the kind found on Valentine's cards. Four days later, on February 20th, he committed suicide by firing his pistol into his mouth.

You can read the rest of it here:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7605448/football_season_is_over

New York, New York

I arrived in New York a few days ago. In the van on the way to the hotel, an Austrian lady was talking about how she got stuck in Havana since her credit cards were from US banks. She said they ate breakfast rolls and drank wine, "We were starving!" and barely made it out of the Hotel Nacional, with just enough cash to pay the hotel incidentals and get to the airport. I told her I'd stayed at the same hotel and had that problem last March--for two days I ended up eating boiled eggs that I stuffed into my coat pocket from the breakfast buffet until things got resolved and I scurried off to the airport. Funny, staying at the historic Hotel Nacional and starving!

Last night I went to see Arthur Miller's, "All My Sons" on Broadway. John Lithgow was incredible, and Katie Holmes was pretty good.

I grabbed a $10 vodka on the rocks, downed it, and took my seat. The play started out OK, but soon got real intense, with line after line of great dialog. By the end of the first act I was completely drawn in and wiping some tears while my body overheated.

It got better and better and I began to get a little depressed. I thought, "How can I ever write that well?" Usually, when I read a book by a notable writer I think, "I could probably do that. " Maybe I'd even make some changes to make it better. What a pompous ass I am. But this script totally overwhelmed me. I was sitting in an aisle seat, about 20 rows back, next to two youngish women. I noticed the attractive girl next to me adjusting her position when I would sit up or cross the other leg. I would wipe my brow, trying to hide that I was wiping away tears, and she would wipe her brow too. So I felt there was some nonverbal communication there. It was almost like a date, but I couldn't bring myself to speak to her. I was mostly focused on the play.

I left during the ovation to hide my flowing eyes. What a script, what a performance.

At the bar upstairs at Sardi's, I ordered an Absolute martini, wet, and scanned the brimming crowd. Soon, a seat opened in the middle of the bar--so I grabbed it. I overheard some man say he was from New Orleans and that started a conversation, and his wife joined in. Then, it turned out the girl next to him was from New Orleans too! So there were four New Orleanians there on that particular night at that particular time. We talked and laughed and drank away.

A tall, 50-something blonde woman breezed in and ordered a martini. She has a restaurant in L.A. and also a place in NYC. We had a nice chat, but couldn't help but notice the fuzz growing on her neck. The light hit it just right.

I excused myself around midnight since I had to be in Jersey in the morning for business.

Drinking with Codrescu

In New Orleans when I decided to get serious about writing I started hanging out at the Goldmine Saloon in the French Quarter. Every Thursday night Dave Brinks hosts the "17 Poets" poetry readings. Sometimes it's spoken word, sometimes it's performance art and sometimes a musician will accompany a reading, which can make for a dreamy experience. You should go, it's great, and there's a surprising amount of talent.

That's where I met Andrei Codrescu, the Romanian-transplant poet who comments on NPR in his inimitable tone. He also teaches at LSU. His readings are riveting, and when he's in the audience he's about the most enthusiastic supporter of the artists, especially if it's one of his students.

Over the next 3 or 4 years I'd run into Andrei in the Quarter, we'd chat a bit, maybe have a coffee or a drink or two if we were at Molly's (probably his favorite bar). I used to get some cache by introducing literary wannabe women to him. He'd humor them and they'd fawn and giggle.

When I was in San Miguel de Allende a few weeks ago at the Tom Robbins workshop I ended up relaying messages between Andrei and Robbins in between workshop sessions. "We used to run around together a little," Robbins said. "His essays on NPR are great. I love listening to them. Does he still drink J&B?"

Robbins eyesight is going -- he can only stand to read or write for about 20 minutes at a time now -- so Andrei is sending Tom a DVD of his latest work.

Andrei's real funny in person, and, of course, real smart and witty, and his dry humor cuts through the syrupy New Orleans air like a cleaver.

And he's a lot of fun to drink with.

Mr. Henry, James Dean & Tennessee Williams

A few years back in New Orleans, probably five now, I was at Harry's bar in the French Quarter working on my book (novel) manuscript. It was pouring down rain outside, and I was sitting at a table by an open window for inspiration. A man came over and started reading it and then offering his suggestions on edits. He turned out to be a PhD who oversaw many doctoral projects at Tulane. He invited me to come to his house for a little party--he was just stopping in to grab a couple of six-packs.

We stopped at Verti Mart on Royal for some vodka and went to his place on the lower end of Royal Street. There were a few old men there. We started drinking vodka on the rocks and they were telling stories. One old man was terribly drunk and he was going on and on about "Tennessee." I faded into drunkenness as he droned on. Was he talking about Tennessee Williams?

The next day I tried to re-hash the conversation. If he was really talking about Tennessee Williams, then I needed to hear his stories with a clearer head!

So I went back to the place that afternoon and the old men were at it again. This time I listened to Mr. Henry carefully. It seems he was a Barrymore on his mother's side and he'd done a fair bit of acting and directing in his day. His wife was Miss Lily, who used to play the piano and sing requests nightly at LaFitte's Blacksmith Shop on Bourbon Street. And Tennessee just adored Miss Lily.

Henry went to New York when he was 18 and did some off-Broadway shows. He said he and James Dean used to meet at Jim Downey's and drink 15 cent beers. "I never saw it, I never thought Jimmy was anything extraordinary. He would sit and complain about how much they'd cut his part. He wore glasses, and wasn't particularly good-looking, so he seemed unremarkable to me -- just another struggling actor. But when I saw him on the silver screen I knew Christ had walked on water! Oh, Jimmy! He was magnificent up there on the screen--and Kazan, Elia Kazan the director was an absolute genius who saw it in him! But poor Jimmy, he left us so young, and he had so much more life in him."

Then the man who I'd originally met started telling his Capote story. It seems he was at a dinner with a group along Cannery Row. "And Truman just kept going on and on about Marlon Brando's sex life, and the men they both had slept with, and heads were turning and he was getting louder and drunker and it was just embarrassing, so I stood up and slapped him across the face to shut him up. Later, I was driving him back to his hotel and he thanked me for that. Then he got out a picture of James Dean he kept in his wallet. He was obsessed with him, and he wanted me to take him to the scene of the crash. He threw a fit, so I took him there. Of course, there's really nothing there, just a plain intersection."

I got this from an AOL discussion site:

California State Highway 46 streaks eastward from the city of Paso Robles, near the northern edge of San Luis Obispo County, and cuts across gentle rolling hills and sweeping fields dotted with an occasional ranch.

It is a desolate, windblown vista, broken only by the squatty, weather-beaten buildings that make up the hamlets of Whitley Gardens, Shandon, and Cholame.

Almost twenty-five miles from Paso Robles, and less than a mile east of Cholame, the highway cuts through a gap in the Temblor Mountains, so named because the San Andreas Fault runs at their base.

Here the highway splits: 46 continues eastward to Bakersfield, and its branch, Highway 41, turns northeast toward Fresno.

This junction near Cholame was the epicenter for a shock that reverberated around the world over two decades ago, but not because of the constantly shifting San Andreas Fault.

Actor James Dean, idol to millions of moviegoers, was killed in a violent automobile accident at the junction.

Cholame, population five, consisting of a Chevron gas station, a small store, and a tiny post office, changed for all time since Dean’s death on Friday, September 30, 1955.

Tijuana Bullfights

I went to the bullfights yesterday at Tijuana's bullring-by-the-sea. I like the sport of it, the cheering fans, the showy matadors, but I'm not crazy about what inevitably happens to the poor bull. He almost never stands a chance. But yesterday was different.

Gabriel-the-Tequila-Man (he has a tequila factory in Guadalajara) brought a fresh bottle and we all drank up (Jaime, Yolanda, Luis, Isabella and me). Problem was, I'd just had two beers and an overtopped vodka martini. So I was well on my way when we got there. We bought Cuban cigars to smoke while we watched the action from about four rows back.

The bull comes charging out, crazed and powerful, snorting and balls swinging, greeted by cheering fans and taunts of matadors. He's a beautiful half-ton of muscle, soon to become a heap of dead flesh. They just keep sticking him and sticking him in the back until he's worn out and bleeding to death, then a sword is thrust fully into him, between the shoulder blades. Usually the bull runs and bucks a little more, then his legs give out and just as he is succumbing to death, a knife is jabbed into the base of his skull. Then there's a last kick or two and he goes stiff. The vaqueros tie him up and three harnessed horses are whipped and slapped as they drag the carcass out, leaving a blood trail. Groundskeepers come out and rake dirt over the blood and they start fresh again.

But yesterday was different: The last bull gave such a fight that they let him live. At one point, he stopped and stared directly at me. Jaime was joking that he was going to come at me, like Pajarito (see below). We all laughed. I cheered wildly as they let the wounded and battered bull back into a gate.

Finally, a fair fight.

One of the coolest things I have ever seen is the video of "Pajarito" or "little bird" the flying bull. You should see him fly up into the stands! This was only a year or so ago, in Mexico City. The bull landed in a lady's seat -- the only fight she'd missed in years. He ended up breaking his legs in the stands and they killed him right there.






In 1930 Hemingway published a knowing essay on bullfighting in Fortune magazine, which two years later became the amazing Death in the Afternoon. The critics hated it but it was a huge success. In 1959, just as I was being born, Hemingway returned to Spain with, as Michener puts it, "two handsome and charismatic young matadors" who were about to go mano a mano, They were also brothers-in-law. Evenly matched, they battled all summer and put on a show of skill and bravery. Hemingway later used these events for his series, A Dangerous Summer.

Major Writers on Writers

I love to hear big-time writers criticizing other big-time writers, or even just telling stories out of class about them. For most of us, that's out of bounds; we don't have the standing to do so.

Truman Capote famously said of Jack Kerouac's rambling style, "That's not writing, that's typing!" Last week at the San Miguel Literary Festival, Tom Robbins said, "But much of what Kerouac wrote was as good or better than what Capote wrote." Ouch. As it turns out, Kerouac was constantly writing, and those close to him said he was always revising and re-writing, although his style makes it seem like a stream-of-consciousness first draft.

Robbins also addressed research in his workshop. He said it should be woven in, so that it becomes a natural part of the writing. "Not like Michener, who spent the first 40 pages of his book, Mexico just spouting out research."

Then there's Michener criticizing Hemingway, although he revered his work. Hem's friend A.E. Hotchner was asked to edit a Hem piece for Life magazine that was supposed to be 10,000 words. Life gave the 120,000 word manuscript to Hotchner to edit. Michener said it was incredibly overwritten and full of repetition and run-on sentences. The polished manuscript ran to about 70,000 words, and when the final version got down to about 45,000 words, it was pretty good. Hmmm...back then they had REAL editors! Today, a book has to be ready to go or publishers won't even look at it.

Once, when Hemingway was just starting out, he gave a manuscript to F. Scott Fitzgerald to critique. Well, Fitzgerald let him have it in a detailed and biting way. Hem scribbled on it, "Kiss my ass." But surely he made some changes to the book after that.

Of course, there was always this ongoing competition/discussion between Hemingway and Faulkner on style. Hem said he knew those big words that Faulkner used, he just preferred to use simpler ones. Personally, I think writing should be clear and succinct, unless a particular thought or passage demands it. Some of Faulkner's stuff you can just get lost in. Like James Joyce.

Michener said of Truman Capote, "I grew ever more grateful to him for playing the role of the genius-clown who reminds the general public that artists are always different and sometimes radically so."

Funny thing about Truman Capote: On cross-country trips he would make the driver take him to a library in some rural county seat and wait while Capote ran inside. When asked what he was doing, Capote said, "Checking the card catalogs. In this one Mailer had seven cards. Gore Vidal had eight. But I had eleven."

The wonderfully crass and honest (and butt-ugly!) poet, Charles Bukowski, when he was rising up, wrote that he knew there was room for him in the literary world, since he had read Tolstoy and all the others, and they just weren't that great. I enjoyed reading Bukowski's novels, especially, Ham on Rye, Women, and Hollywood. They read fast and they're funny and entertaining; sometimes a little gross. Read them and you'll know what I mean.

Bukowski's favorite writer was John Fante. I like him too. A lot. I wish he would've written more novels. Although he was known mostly as a screenwriter, his style is very efficient and clear. I loved his novel, Ask the Dust. Every single sentence is well-written. He also wrote the screenplay adaptation of Nelson Algren's Walk on the Wild Side," which is set in New Orleans.

And then there's Andrei Codrescu's story of how, when he as a young man in New York, fresh from Romania and barely able to speak English, the Beat poet Allen Ginsburg set up a meeting for Codrescu with Wiliam S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch, Junkie). During lunch, Burroughs slid his cold, bony hand on Codrescu's thigh. Codrescu, (as he tells it) told Burroughs he wasn't into that.

You know that Burroughs lived on the Westbank of New Orleans? Yes, in 1948 he lived in Algiers. The cops were always trying to arrest him for shooting heroin, but they could never catch him. So the city council passed an ordinance that you could be arrested for having track marks on your arms. Then the cops picked him up for that.

Burroughs was also arrested after police searched his home and found letters between him and Ginsberg referring to a possible delivery of pot. Burroughs fled to Mexico to escape imprisonment in Louisiana. Burroughs planned to stay in Mexico for at least five years, the length of his charge's statute of limitations.

Burroughs used to shoot an apple off his wife's head, as a drunken game. In 1951, Burroughs shot and killed Vollmer in a boozed-up game of "William Tell" at a party above the American-owned Bounty Bar in Mexico City. He spent 13 days in jail before his brother came to Mexico City and bribed Mexican lawyers and officials, which allowed Burroughs to be released on bail while he awaited trial for the killing (he never did).

Hurricane Katrina Three Years Later

Looking back, my life has changed dramatically since Katrina hit, three years ago today. I've published five books in four genres (one I edited, the others I wrote) and I've become a "real writer" according to others. The last two books are really in pre-release, since I've focused more on writing than promoting. But that's a pretty hefty effort, right?

Here's a picture of some old folks heading back to their house with a friend, after waiting for three days in the hot sun and uncertain nights for help to arrive. The lady trailing collapsed right after I took this shot, but medics were there quickly to load her into an ambulance. Most of the nearly 1,400 people who died were over 65.

If you want to see some color pics I took right after the hurricane, go here: http://smallwoodviewofhurricane.blogspot.com/

I wanted to put out the first words I wrote for publication, from the Preface of my Katrina book, "The Five People You Meet in Hell: Surviving Katrina."

Although the nation and the world pities New Orleans and mourns its death-by-media, those whose heart and spirit live there know that what makes the city so unique wasn’t destroyed by the effects of Hurricane Katrina, but rather, temporarily dispersed. People in Houston, Denver, Atlanta, New York, and elsewhere are getting a watered-down dose of New Orleans culture — an inimitable romantic brew of history, music, art, cuisine, corruption, carnality, faith, and freedom. And as these elements return to New Orleans, like moths to a flame, with the focused fervor that tragedy brings to art, it will rise to be even greater than it once was: the most hauntingly distinct and enjoyable place in America and cultural icon for the world.

For me, it started like any other sweltering August weekend in the French Quarter: perched in the shade of the grand live oak trees at Royal and Orleans streets, sipping a cold can of beer and making small talk with the local artists. It helped them pass the hours between sparse sales and filled my day while we all could savor life in the Quarter; where time is motionless, every motion a timeless caress of history.

We were all there for the same reasons. The charm and tradition of the French Quarter provided the ideal backdrop for dreaming dreams, and for drinking in the natural poetry of days full of art and music that sustained us. This intoxicating lifeblood, like the aroma of night-blooming jasmine on warm evenings, seduced us and fed our dreams.

A few had visions as grandiose as changing the world through an artistic zeitgeist like some who had gone before us. Others just lived the delusion of sustaining themselves while pursuing their own artistic direction. New Orleans gave us that chance, and the French Quarter doubled the bet. We reveled in the odds — and the oddities.

Soon, all our lives would be shattered. Or, at the very least, scattered.

And our beloved city, New Orleans, would be changed forever.

Tom Robbins: Still Crazy After All These Years

I had the good fortune to meet Tom Robbins last week. He was the headliner at the 2008 Summer Literary Festival held by the San Miguel Authors' Sala. San Miguel de Allende, Mexico is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. It reminds me of the French Quarter (actually, vice-versa) and like the Quarter, the muse is there. On my first visit in June I wrote feverishly. The place just has that inspirational feel. It's the balconies, the mountains, the happy children.

I was anxious to hear Tom R. speak and he didn't disappoint. In his keynote address he announced that he would not only speak about language being not the frosting, but the cake, but also he would reveal the secret of the universe!

And he did. (Email me for enlightenment).

There was a full buffet dinner served afterward and I was lucky enough to have my assigned seat right next to him! So I tried to strike up a conversation:

RS: Hey Tom, I read somewhere online that you wished you would have started writing novels later; that maybe you could have done better if you'd waited until you had a little more seasoning.

TR: I don't think I ever said that. In fact, I sort of think I started late. But there's all kinds of stuff on the Internet about me that's not true.

RS: But you do like the expressionistic painter Jackson Pollock, don't you?
TR: Well, yes. Very much so. I went to live in New York City for a year to research his life and write a book about him. But I never wrote the book. It was a good excuse to live in New York.

RS: Did you see that movie they made about his life? It was pretty good, I thought.
TR: Yes, it was good. I thought they captured him well. But the thing they didn't do was to say why his work was important.

RS: I dunno. That's Hollywood. Maybe they didn't want to get that deep into it.

RS: You know Richard Ford told a story in New Orleans that one interviewer said it was always such a disappointment to meet authors--they never spoke like they wrote.
TS: Yeah, people expect me to talk like I write.
RS: You never know what someone is going to be like, in person.
TS: Yeah, I used to go to parties in New York with Eugene O'Neill and people thought he was my retarded older brother. He could barely speak a complete sentence.
RS: That's incredible. What a playwright.

RS: You do like cigars, don't you?
TR: Yes.

RS: What kind is your favorite?
TR: Well, Cubans, of course.

RS: Yeah, but what kind of Cubans?
TR: Vegas Robaina.
RS: I like Montecristo. Montecristo #2. You know them?
TR: Yes.
RS: They're the torpedo-shaped ones.
TR: I know.

RS: They're only $40 a box in Cuba. I got some when I went last March.
TS: You have to be careful--they'll sell you counterfeits.
RS: But you can tell by making sure they are rolled uniformly, and checking out that the box matches the ring.
TS: OK.

RS: Cubans are $200 a box in Mexico. And, of course, you're not supposed to even have them in the U.S.
TR: I just drive to Canada. Put a couple of boxes of Nicaraguans on the seat and throw a sweater over them. Then put a box of Cubans under the seat. When I cross the border, they'll ask, "Hey, what's under the sweater?" I show them the cigar boxes and they look at them and let me on through. They never even think to look under the seat.

RS: I just separate them from the box and take the rings off them to bring them in from Mexico. I don't think they have cigar sniffing dogs yet.
TR: And if they did, the dogs wouldn't know the difference between a Cuban and a Nicaraguan.

RS: So, I was laughing about papaya juice in your, "Fierce Invalids" book.
TR: (laughs) Now that part was autobiographical. I was at a Havana hotel and I asked for "jugo papaya." The waiters just laughed their asses off. Papaya means "pussy" there.
RS: Ha, haa! I suppose it does sort of look like one on the inside...
TR: And it's juicy.

Suddenly, there was a thunderbolt outside and it began pouring rain. Both Tom and I looked out the open doors for a minute. He was mesmerized--and electrified.

RS: It's great to write when it's raining, isn't it?
TR: Yes, I love it.
RS: That's why I like New Orleans. It pours. It just really pours when it rains.
TR: That's why I like Seattle. It reduces the temptation to do anything else but write.

The lights went out and we were thrust into blackness, with only the flicker of candles wavering over the tables. It seemed we'd be eating in near darkness. Then the lights came back on, while the storm raged. Someone closed the doors, so we couldn't see the lightning and rain anymore.

TR: I don't know why they closed the doors.

He seemed a little distraught.

After several minutes, someone opened the doors and Tom craned his neck to see outside. But it seemed like he couldn't get enough, like the moment had passed.

TR: Excuse me, but I've got a long day tomorrow. I think I'll head out.
RS: See ya manana.