It's Tough Serving Two Masters

Chekhov started his career as a doctor. When he began to write, he was pulled in two directions until his short stories started selling and he was able to be a full-time writer. Later, when reflecting on that period, he wrote of how difficult it was to "serve two masters."

To keep things going economically, to provide capital and time to invest in my writing, I research and publish information technology reports. It's been my primary career for over 25 years, but I really wish I could devote all my efforts to my novels, plays, screenplays, essays and poetry. (yes, poetry, but I will not publish it until I'm dead and gone!).

I was complaining about how serving two masters scatters my mind, how it frazzles me and prevents me from going all out as a writer. But a friend of mine listed all of the horrific life situations many famous writers overcame, and as he went, I realized, really, I ain't got it so bad. I mean, I live by the Pacific Ocean and also have a place in the beautiful mountains of central Mexico. In the last year or so, I've been to three Cuban cities, seen plays on Broadway, went to Las Vegas, San Felipe, La Paz, Cancun, Puebla, Chouloula, Ensenada, and seen bullfights in Tijuana, Mexico. My compatriot writers had it pretty tough: John Fante went blind and dictated his last few books and screenplays; Thoreau and Walker Percy had tuberculosis, which weakened them, causing Percy to write mostly lying down, and sending Thoreau to an early grave; William Burroughs was a lifelong heroin addict; Carson McCullers spent her life in depression; Hemingway was most assuredly bi-polar and an alcoholic, as was Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Bukowski, Capote, Tennessee Williams, Kerouac and many others; Poe was a flat out nutcase; Wilde was sent to a cold, damp prison, even Shakespeare was a pothead.

So you just have to play the hand you're dealt, and do the best work you can. And the craziness, the strain, the strife and struggle can be a great influence on the art itself.

Gore Vidal is Still Alive; Mailer Isn't

Gore Vidal said, "I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television," and he's pretty much lived his life like that. I took his advice to heart a couple of times this week, but I'm still waiting on the TV moguls to call.

Recently, I watched Bill Maher interview an aged, skeletal Vidal sitting in a wheelchair. He was a hideous, scary sight, bony-faced and frail, but he still had his caustic wit. Early on in his career he said, "All writers are rivals" and, "Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little." He has outlived his rivals, Capote by decades, and Mailer, only slightly, as Vidal himself looks on the verge of death. In fact, I think that he would have been better served not to have appeared on TV in such a decrepit state.

I watched a comedian the other night say that Norman Mailer, "Drank, fought, had six wives and even stabbed the second one." He paused and said wryly, "I've never read one of his books, but I'm a big fan." Sadly, I believe this is true for most people when it comes to great writers. They've heard of them, even their books, but they haven't read them.

But what is most disappointing is that writers of note are not treated with much respect by the public in old age. No one was particularly paying attention to Mailer in his last years, Tennessee Williams was shunned and derided for decades, and many others have lived in obscurity or even poverty until years after their death when their brilliance was finally discovered. That's sort of discouraging, but if you are true to the art, you really must care only about the work itself.

Vidal also said, "Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made," which is part of the struggle: one must survive so one must sell books, and to do so you must promote -- which takes away from the quiet and stillness needed to really dig deep and create good works.

On the other hand Vidal proclaimed, "In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are."

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.

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).