Authors: Tom Grimes
Mentor: A Memoir (26 page)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
T
he one hundred and ten pages I wrote in Frank’s study generated enough momentum to carry me into the late fall. By erated enough momentum to carry me into the late fall. By early December, the boy I’d pictured leaping off a rooftop began his metamorphosis from image to sound, from sound to sentence, and—if I was lucky—from sentence to music. I’d borrowed the conventions of a crime novel; the book began with a cop killing. But I didn’t want the novel to
sound
formulaic. A novel’s music
is
its meaning. So I made the details specific, yet slightly strange. When the boy, Ray, comes abreast of a patrol car parked on a deserted street, surrounded by condemned buildings:
he one hundred and ten pages I wrote in Frank’s study generated enough momentum to carry me into the late fall. By erated enough momentum to carry me into the late fall. By early December, the boy I’d pictured leaping off a rooftop began his metamorphosis from image to sound, from sound to sentence, and—if I was lucky—from sentence to music. I’d borrowed the conventions of a crime novel; the book began with a cop killing. But I didn’t want the novel to
sound
formulaic. A novel’s music
is
its meaning. So I made the details specific, yet slightly strange. When the boy, Ray, comes abreast of a patrol car parked on a deserted street, surrounded by condemned buildings:
His gloved hands unsheathe the truncated rifle barrel strapped to his chest when the cop nearest him looks out, his eyes meeting Ray’s. They don’t pick up the gun at first. It’s just a simple turn of the head, a reaction to something stirring near the blurry edge of peripheral vision.The first C-4-tipped shell hits the window and rocks the car, its passenger-side tires lifting off the ground. The plastic explosive in the cartridge bursts on impact, dappling the windows and doors with small bright stars and kicking back a shower of sparks. Holes open in the passenger window and Ray can hear shouting—panicked, angry, terrified—inside the vehicle. The second round rips through the interior of the car and blows out its far windows, glass leaping from the doorframes and fanning out over the street. This time no voices are heard under the clacking of metal as Ray reloads, just a deep, hoarse whining. He fires again, this blast taking off the steering wheel top. Then he realizes that the whining sound is the cop nearest him trying to breathe. As the gun’s report echoes down the street, it becomes quiet enough for Ray to realize that the guy is still trying, though just barely. The spooky thing is that the sound seems to be coming not from his mouth, but from his chest.Ray peers into the car and sees that the man’s head has fallen back against the security grating behind him. His jaws are open, part of his throat torn away. What’s left is a thin, bloody, faintly pulsing stalk. His shirt ripped open, a fractured bone juts out from the skinless stump of shoulder, his flesh from sternum to ribs peeled away like a skinned onion. The man’s insides gleam, slick and reddish-black in the streetlight. For an instant, Ray thinks he sees the man’s heart dangling by a partially severed artery, beating arhythmically outside his ribs. His own heart clutches.
The multiple metaphors disliked by my classmates were gone, as well as
Season’s End
’s first-person point of view. And although Frank’s subject matter and mine differed, I had studied his use of third person, learning how, in
Body & Soul
, his narrator illuminates Claude’s thoughts, yet remains detached, the voice sympathetic, yet impartial.
Season’s End
’s first-person point of view. And although Frank’s subject matter and mine differed, I had studied his use of third person, learning how, in
Body & Soul
, his narrator illuminates Claude’s thoughts, yet remains detached, the voice sympathetic, yet impartial.
Over dinner in a Chinese restaurant, before I began my third novel, I’d said to Frank, “Since I may be about to waste two years of my life, do you have any advice?”
“Go in with plenty of energy,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Bob Stone”—whose novel
Dog Soldiers
I worshipped and used as a model for the book I’d begun to call “City of God”—“says novels end once they’ve worn us out. Norman equates writing a novel with a prizefight. You have to train like a boxer trains. You have to be in shape. If you aren’t, entropy wins, you lose.”
Dog Soldiers
I worshipped and used as a model for the book I’d begun to call “City of God”—“says novels end once they’ve worn us out. Norman equates writing a novel with a prizefight. You have to train like a boxer trains. You have to be in shape. If you aren’t, entropy wins, you lose.”
These recommendations spoke to Gerry Howard’s concern that I wouldn’t have the requisite energy and concentration to complete the novel. And, given my previous winter’s experience when language no longer streamed through my mind but became as stagnant as a swamp, they also made sense. Another semester of teaching freshman composition had smudged and worn down my imagination the way corrections on a handwritten page blacken and diminish a rubber eraser. And I can’t say I followed Mailer’s advice (although I doubt he followed his advice, either). Upon learning from an allergist that my immune system reacted most to mold, I immediately said, “Beer contains mold, right?” Yes. “But distilled alcohol doesn’t.” Correct. So I toted home a sack filled with antihistamine tablets, nasal steroids, lung inhalants, and a gallon of Jim Beam. Subsequently, like Frank, I began my evenings with a “bump,” and ended them nine or ten “bumps” later. The result was less sinus congestion, a crisper hangover, and a resilient buffer between “City of God” and my anxiety about finishing it. I knew I was close to the end, but I didn’t want to force or rush its final pages.
The previous summer, Frank had responded to a
rational
letter from me regarding
Body & Soul
.
I know what you mean
, he wrote,
about the urge to close down too quickly
. (I’d suggested that he resist it; he didn’t.)
But not to worry, Part II is done [about a hundred and ten or twenty pages] and all the anxiety I had about it is now transferred to Part III, which I am about to begin, and which should run about two hundred pages at least. I doubt I can finish this calendar year, but for all that, I’ ll try.
rational
letter from me regarding
Body & Soul
.
I know what you mean
, he wrote,
about the urge to close down too quickly
. (I’d suggested that he resist it; he didn’t.)
But not to worry, Part II is done [about a hundred and ten or twenty pages] and all the anxiety I had about it is now transferred to Part III, which I am about to begin, and which should run about two hundred pages at least. I doubt I can finish this calendar year, but for all that, I’ ll try.
The letter was dated July. By January, the book was done. In six months, he’d written two hundred pages. The preceding two hundred had taken him three years. But pressure, rather than haste, was the issue. Frank often spoke of “the restless, searching soul behind the prose,” and he frequently said that “when the soul is truly on the page,” literature has been created. A reader, he added, must feel the continual, but unobtrusive, pressure of the writer’s soul behind every sentence. For five years, I couldn’t articulate the anxiety I felt as I wrote my novel’s concluding pages. But, in 1999, Frank sent me a note concerning an anthology of essays about the craft of writing he would edit, entitled
The Eleventh Draft
:
The Eleventh Draft
:
Dear Tom,Want to make a quick buck and be in with some big names?But seriously, I hope you’ll do this. I’d like to have you in the book.Love to you both,Frank
I answered, sure. Then, addressing my anxieties, I wrote in my essay that “pressure builds as you approach the end of a novel. Unlike short stories, the chances are not that you will make a sudden wrong move and wreck everything. With novels, the likelihood is more that you won’t get everything in, won’t catch every possible echo and reverberation. . . . So as I hurtle toward closure, I need to slow down at the same time. I desperately want the book to end; I never want the book to end. I’m terrified and ecstatic. When I wrote the end of that closing chapter [referring to
City of God
] I literally dropped my pencil, sat up straight, and raised my fists in the air.”
City of God
] I literally dropped my pencil, sat up straight, and raised my fists in the air.”
But had my two years of work produced a good, publishable novel? “Good” in whose eyes, “publishable” according to what editorial board’s opinion? Also, would Frank approve of and perhaps even admire it? I had no idea. Once my fleeting elation passed, I had pages of prose that needed editing.
I borrowed a Mac classic computer from a student (I still owned a typewriter). Then Jody and I drove to Key West. We’d rented a house with a dreary living room, but a large bedroom, a bright kitchen, and a deck outside of its French doors. Every morning, we walked to the Cuban café, ordered to-go cups filled with
café con leche
, returned to the house, and then worked, uninterrupted, for eight hours. Jody perched at the kitchen counter with the computer and keyboard, while I sat on the deck, pencil-edited the manuscript, and handed her corrected pages through the open doors. Then she entered the changes, I gave her additional changes, and, at dusk, we strolled to the marina’s bar, ordered drinks, and watched the sunset. In two weeks, we cut five hundred and sixty-seven pages to five hundred and ten pages. Shortly before Christmas, we took a day off, then returned to our stations and began to revise the next draft.
café con leche
, returned to the house, and then worked, uninterrupted, for eight hours. Jody perched at the kitchen counter with the computer and keyboard, while I sat on the deck, pencil-edited the manuscript, and handed her corrected pages through the open doors. Then she entered the changes, I gave her additional changes, and, at dusk, we strolled to the marina’s bar, ordered drinks, and watched the sunset. In two weeks, we cut five hundred and sixty-seven pages to five hundred and ten pages. Shortly before Christmas, we took a day off, then returned to our stations and began to revise the next draft.
One evening, a woman we knew invited us to a cocktail party. In the dim light, I recognized Rust Hills,
Esquire
magazine’s former but still influential literary editor, and his wife, the writer Joy Williams, whom I’d seen several years earlier on Sam Lawrence’s deck. Now, holding my drink, I passed them, unnoticed, which I expected. What I didn’t expect was an invitation to the cocktail party they held the following week. The ground floor of their house was one long, rectangular room. Toward its far end, people gathered near the wooden kitchen table. On it stood an array of liquor bottles, plastic cups, and a bowl filled with sliced lemons and limes. Across from it, a shelf displayed perfectly aligned cans, jars, and boxes of Campbell’s soup, Skippy peanut butter, and Rice Krispies. I couldn’t decide whether Rust and Joy ate the food or if they’d assembled an ironic collection of Americana. When Rust saw me, he interrupted his conversation, extended one arm, and said, “Tom, come on in!” He curled his arm around my shoulders and pulled me toward him. Conversations paused as other guests studied me, wondering why I merited attention. Speaking softly, Rust said, “Frank called and told me you were in town,” which explained the invitation. Then he poured bourbon and soda into a glass, placed the glass in my hand, and escorted me to the back deck. Torch lamps cast a dim, gold light as he drew me into a quiet, poolside shadow.
Esquire
magazine’s former but still influential literary editor, and his wife, the writer Joy Williams, whom I’d seen several years earlier on Sam Lawrence’s deck. Now, holding my drink, I passed them, unnoticed, which I expected. What I didn’t expect was an invitation to the cocktail party they held the following week. The ground floor of their house was one long, rectangular room. Toward its far end, people gathered near the wooden kitchen table. On it stood an array of liquor bottles, plastic cups, and a bowl filled with sliced lemons and limes. Across from it, a shelf displayed perfectly aligned cans, jars, and boxes of Campbell’s soup, Skippy peanut butter, and Rice Krispies. I couldn’t decide whether Rust and Joy ate the food or if they’d assembled an ironic collection of Americana. When Rust saw me, he interrupted his conversation, extended one arm, and said, “Tom, come on in!” He curled his arm around my shoulders and pulled me toward him. Conversations paused as other guests studied me, wondering why I merited attention. Speaking softly, Rust said, “Frank called and told me you were in town,” which explained the invitation. Then he poured bourbon and soda into a glass, placed the glass in my hand, and escorted me to the back deck. Torch lamps cast a dim, gold light as he drew me into a quiet, poolside shadow.
His grayish hair resembled Frank ’s—parted, yet slightly unkempt—as did his nonchalant, aging prep-school boy’s manner, typical of a Wesleyan graduate, which he was, but not of someone schooled at Merchant Marine Academy, his high school alma mater. I could tell that he’d been handsome once, but he seemed to have aged comfortably—and perhaps intentionally—into the role of a slightly dissipated old man.
“What are you working on?” he said.
“A novel.”
“Well, when it’s done send it to me. I can probably find an excerpt to publish.”
Surprised by how swiftly I’d been transformed from a nonentity into a privileged insider, I said, “I will, thanks.”
“Now you teach, right?”
I nodded.
“So, you teach my book ”—
Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular
—“and I read your stuff. Okay? That’s how it works. Make sense?”
Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular
—“and I read your stuff. Okay? That’s how it works. Make sense?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
No doubt he’d made the same, mutually self-serving arrangement with other young writers, but he broached the matter so directly that the exchange seemed innocent.
As new guests arrived, Rust turned to greet them, and when I stepped inside to refill my glass, the bookstore owner who had belittled me for years but seemed to have forgotten the past approached me, smiled, shook my hand, and asked if I would come to his store to do a book signing. I said, “Sure,” gave him a fictitious telephone number to call, and then, after speaking with Joy for a while, Jody and I said thanks, good night, and left.
Working on the novel’s cleaner, sleeker draft, we trimmed five hundred and ten pages to four hundred and fifty-four. I hated the book. But I printed the manuscript, mailed it to Frank, and waited.
Shortly after New Year’s eve, we attended another cocktail party where a woman I didn’t know and remember now not as a physical presence but simply as a voice said to me, as if I were an idiot, “The next time you get an offer from Farrar, Straus, take it.” She was somehow related to the publishing business. Then she asked what I was working on.
“A novel,” I said. “Sam Lawrence told me to send it to him when I’ve finished it.”
About to walk away, she patted my chest and said, “Honey, read the paper. Sam Lawrence died this morning.”
The next day, the
Times
published his obituary:
Frank didn’t call before Jody and I left Key West, even though he must have had the manuscript for five days. Intellectually, I understood that despite snow, ice, and subzero temperatures, Frank hadn’t planted himself on his front stoop to await its delivery. But emotionally, I pictured him standing on the sidewalk, wearing his bathrobe, hoping to spot the mail truck. And what I felt always trumped what I knew.
Times
published his obituary:
January 7, 1994Seymour Lawrence, 67, Publisher for a Variety of Eminent AuthorsSeymour Lawrence, an independent book publisher in New York City and Boston for almost 30 years who brought the first works of many important writers to the public, died on Tuesday at the Englewood Community Hospital in Englewood, Fla. . . .Among the dozens of distinguished authors published by Mr. Lawrence, who was known as Sam, were Richard Brautigan, Jim Harrison, Katherine Anne Porter, Kurt Vonnegut and Frank Conroy.Mr. Lawrence published Mr. Vonnegut’s novel
Slaughterhouse-Five
in 1969, after the manuscript had been rejected by the publishing firm with which the author had a contract.Mr. Lawrence’s authors described him as a publisher who was passionately committed to writers and writing, but who was not always tolerant of “misguided reviewers” or the publishing bureaucracy.Joseph Kanon, an executive at Houghton Mifflin, said: “The first time I met Sam Lawrence, he was making an argument on behalf of one of his authors. The last time I spoke with him, this morning, he was doing the same thing. On both occasions, as usual, he got what he wanted.”
Other books
Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and The People Who by Ewalt, David M.
An Inconvenient Husband by Karen Van Der Zee
Boot Camp Bride by Lizzie Lamb
The Alias Men by F. T. Bradley
Shiver and Bright by Viola Grace
Intuition by C. J. Omololu
In-Laws & Outlaws by Ally Gray
Dragon Island by Berryhill, Shane
The Immortal Harvest by L. J. Wallace
Ariah by B.R. Sanders