Category: literature

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To the editor

On March 7, the New York Times published an article entitled, “Literary Novelists Address 9/11, Finally“, on the occasion of several new novels about the attacks and their aftermath.

Unfortunately, your writer seems not to have researched this matter well enough. In September 2003, I published Paul West’s novel, “The Immensity of the Here and Now: A Novel of 9.11.” This book was reviewed by the Village Voice, Library Journal, Booklist, Midwest Book Review, American Book Review the Santa Fe New Mexican, Boston’s NPR affiliate (WBUR) and the Air Force Academy’s literary Journal, War Literature and the Arts (where it was the Editor’s Choice), among other venues.

Among the comments Immensity received:

“‘The Immensity Of The Here And Now’ is profound, disturbing, and a compelling inner study of picking up the pieces in the wake of personal devastation.” (Midwest Book Review)

“In Paul West’s 23rd book of fiction [. . .], the aftereffects of [9/11] gradually come into view, then withdraw into a jungle of memory and hallucination — the tragedy perpetually accessible and elusive, too easy and too impossible to imagine.” (Village Voice)

“As West so ingeniously perceives it, 9.11 is not just a day that will live in infamy, but an infamy that will exist at a particular place and on a particular day forever.” (War, Literature and the Arts)

“Risky, raucous, filled with moments of audacious beauty, ‘Immensity’ proves that West, our foremost word wizard, won’t play it safe, unlike so many American artists.” (Bill Marx at WBUR radio)

“West’s phenomenal command of language and the flux of consciousness, and his epic sense of the significance of 9/11 are staggering in their verve, astuteness, and resonance.” (Booklist Magazine)

Immensity was also blurbed by literary critics Sven Birkerts, Irving Malin and Hugh Nissenson. The book is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s sites, along with national distribution to bookstores via several wholesalers and distributors. An extensive collection of reviews and blurbs is on the book’s site [now defunct. –ed].

The New York Times received advance copies four months before publication, but declined to review the novel. Evidently, a new work of fiction about 9/11 by a literary author with more than 20 volumes to his credit was not even deemed “new and noteworthy.”

Given the limited space the paper has for book reviews, I can understand the decision to pass. However, I can’t begin to imagine why Mr. Wyatt would write, “only now are books being published that some literary critics are saying take the substantial risks needed to give them staying power” when The Immensity of the Here and Now has been in print for 18 months.

Paul West may be a difficult writer, but he is one whom we should not ignore.

Gil Roth
Publisher
Voyant Publishing

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Funny Books

Really long article on comics, by Charles McGrath in the New York Times. Oh, wait. It’s about graphic novels, not comics. My bad.

It actually has some good points about the narrative form, and some neat comments from cartoonists. It doesn’t really get into the finances of the business, which is integral to understanding the development of comics.

I’ll write more extensively about the subject soon, as it’s something I care about a lot. I’m not sure how such a massive article on comics can get published without mentioning (like it or not) the work of Dave Sim, who recently finished a 300-issue serial written and drawn monthly over the course of twenty-seven years, but we’ve all got our lacunae, I guess.

And it’s “McCloud,” not “McLoud.”

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Notes from New Hampshire

Hey, VM readers! Here’s another non-Gil treat for you! My buddy Elayne is up at her farm-house in New Hampshire this summer, finishing up her book, and sent me a lengthy missive yesterday. She’s a pretty funny story-teller, so I asked if it’d be okay to run this piece. I’m hoping that this involves into a weekly ramble/dispatch from NH. She starts out with an anecdote about a chance meeting with Philip Roth, which arose because of Ron Rosenbaum’s great new column about Roth’s new novel, The Plot Against America. I’d like to Ron’s piece, but it’s a temporary link at the New York Observer site, so it’ll be inactive in a few days. Without further ado:

Elayne and Chip “meet” Philip Roth

Last fall, Chip [Samuel R. Delany] and I are going to meet for Lunch at Luisa’s (sp?)–an Iberian place that Chip likes, but Dennis won’t go to because one of the waiters “looks at him funny.” Being anal, I get there early. It is kind of a late lunch though, maybe two or three o’clock in the afternoon, so none of the tables are set any longer. The place is small, and seating is tight; you almost feel you are eating lunch with the folks seated at the next table. I take a table near three older guys. The waiter looks at me–with a distinctly non-funny gaze–and brings water, utensils, napkins, etc. I notice that one of the men–seated practically on top of me–looks just like Philip Roth. I say to myself “I wonder if that guy is Philip Roth?” (I simultaneously say something to myself like “I sooooo fucking rock if I am ‘lunching’ with Philip Roth!”)

So the guys talk and I sit down and eavesdrop. Not in a super-nosey, starfucker way, more in an I-am-all-alone-and-sitting-really-close-to-you way. Then (gah!) the Roth guy mildly misquotes Lolita (a line from Quilty) and I smile. In a good-natured tone, he asks me why I am smiling. So I tell him Lolita is my favorite novel and then gently correct his quote. At this point, the ‘Rothman’ asks me if I would like to join their table, but I demure (in part because I am not quite sure he really means it, and in part because I would probably ask stupid, lowbrow questions like, “Was it YOU who decided to cast Richard Benjamin in the movie version of Goodbye Columbus?”).

Enter Chip, who sits down. Now we are even more crowded-in than before. I can hear every word the Rothman and his buddies are saying (they are discussing how scrawny Nicole Kidman is). Since I knew she was starring in the then up-coming film of The Human Stain, I was even more confident in my identification of Roth and treating it pretty much like a fideism.

But to be sure, and to alert Chip to the potential increase in lunch-cool-factor, I wrote on a paper napkin. What I wrote was “Hey! Isn’t that guy Philip Roth?” It took a minute for Chip to do the let-me-perform-a-subtle-head-swivel thing. It took another minute for him to work his “gaydar” on the conversation about Nicole, which had now shifted to the topic Tom Cruise’s body. So Chip wasn’t entirely without reason when he took the napkin back and wrote, “I doubt it, because all of those men are GAY.” Then I wrote (and yes, now we looked like either lovers or retards), “Well, that might be. But one of those gay guys is Philip Roth!”

I flip the napkin over, (so the Portuguese waiter can’t read it, dammit!) and we proceed to have lunch. Chip excuses himself to use the bathroom. I am alone . . . again. Roth and his friends have ordered some really messy appetizers, like baked queso with chorizo or something. Roth leans over to me and politely asks if they can have one of our clean napkins, because, as I mentioned, none of the other tables are set. But the only clean napkin we have is the one where Chip tried to “out” Philip Roth AND both his friends as, in my friend Susan’s phrasing, “the Gay.” So, because I am a freakin’ social genius, I say nothing and just shake my head “no”. Roth gives me a “You clearly HAVE an extra, clean napkin. Why won’t you give it to us, you eavesdropping, nosey, Nabokov-obsessed, girl-freak?” sort of look. I then try to use the napkin in a way that looks nonchalant, but I only manage some super-spazoid, napkin-as-hot-potato maneuver.

Chip comes back and writes on the crumpled napkin, that he and Roth’s papers are both stored at Boston University. He doesn’t introduce himself though, for obvious reasons.

General Store

Before you read this, please do a Google Image search of Harrisville, NH and then an image search of Chesham, NH. Ok. So the first couple images you see on the screen? That is where I am.

I go to the Harrisville General Store today to get milk and some other stuff. I notice that outside, sitting on the bench, are two big and ugly biker dudes. There is a Harley Davidson “conference” thing up in northern NH this week, so I figure they are stragglers from that. They are all leathered up, and tattooed with things like “Kill All Towelheads,” “Americans: Dumb And Lovin’ It,” “If You Can Read This, You are a Communist Whore,” and various snake patterns. Anyway, as I am coming out of the store and gazing out peacefully at the beautiful, gently undulating lake that forms the town’s visual backdrop, one of them approaches me, opens his mouth, and asks:

“Where’s the closest Hooters?”

Pause. I had NO IDEA what the biker-guy said. None. I kind of thought he said, “Where are the most shooters?” Or something, and had a “guns or tequila?” moment. But then:

“Excuse me?”

A little louder, he asks again:

“Do you know where the closest Hooters might be?”

Now, a bunch of synapses have to fire and pretty quickly. I do a quick calculation based on the fashion, the tattoos, the Harleys, the fact that they are asking a woman to direct them to a tit-bar, and several fairly hackneyed stereotypes, and I ask myself, “What are the odds these guys are not total assclowns?” I look at the Edenic surroundings, do the math, and decide “zilch.”

I say, “Sorry guys. You are in a Hooters-free zone.”

WhatthehellwhereistheclosestHooters?

They think for a minute and the one is able to formulate:

“This zone. How far does it extend (he probably really said ‘how far does it go,’ but it is my story, darn it!)?”

(Sit back. Here comes the genius part . . .)

I reply, “Boston.”

See, Boston is an hour and a half away. I am pretty sure Manchester, NH has a Hooters, and Manchester is only 40 minutes away, but there is just no way in God’s heaven I am sending them somewhere so dangerously, disastrously close. Plus, tee hee hee, along the main “road” to Boston, they have been having all of these manhole covers blow off and fly into the air. I have no propensity for killing bikers. I’m not a killer at all, generally (OK, there was that baby bird. Once.) But because of the exploding manholes, the traffic is WAY SLOW on that road right now. Then the second biker inquires,

“Boston, Mass?”

No Einstein: Boston, Maryland.

“Yeah. Sorry . . . but I do hear the food at that one is excellent, and that it is kind of a ‘lesbian’ Hooters. There are lots of female customers there.”

This titillates/confuses them a little. They half-grumble, drool a bit, get on their bikes and ride off. In the direction of Boston.

They are probably still waiting. . . .

Gross Thing

Yesterday, Katie (the barn cat) came to the living room window to say “hello” to me and to show me the near-dead chipmunk she had in her mouth. I was at the end of the Elayne-confronts-animals-in-pain movie, after the wounded bluejay incident, and was in no mood for more dead shit. I just hoped she killed it sooner than later, didn’t bat the poor thing around too much, and that someday chipmunks would evolve into T-Rex-sized predators who would follow cats around, catch them, and slowly nibble them to death.

I just kinda went “Eeeew” and turned back to my History of the Spartans.

This morning, I let Benifer (“Benifer” is my moniker for the puppy that lives here, because he is the unlikely lovechild of “Benji” and “Lucifer”) out to play in the fenced-in back yard. About half an hour later, I go out to get him. Something brown hangs from his mouth.

Double “Eeeew.”

Now I have to figure out how to get Benifer to release the (now dead) chipmunk. Then I have to figure out how to remove it from the yard. Katie, of course, is nowhere to be found. I run inside, get some dog food, and look for a shovel or something to scoop the chipmunk up and fling it into the woods. Meanwhile, I am fluttering my arms around like a gay man meeting Liza Minelli and muttering “gross, gross, gross” to my freaked-out self.

My complicated (but ingenious) plan is to distract Benifer with the dog food, scoop the chipmunk up with the shovel, and quickly dispense with it. Trouble is, I can’t find a fucking shovel. Anywhere. I run to the BARN (which is where everyone KEEPS SHOVELS!) and there is a car, but no shovels. The dog is still “eating” the chipmunk. I panic and run into the kitchen and get the tool that any intelligent person would use to remove a six-inch-long, dead chipmunk: a spatula.

I know, Gil. But this is not the time for your pity.

I grab a handful of dry dog food, run outside and throw it on the ground. As I had predicted in the complicated-but-ingenious plan, Benifer momentarily drops his “prey” in order to investigate the food. I then spend ten minutes trying to balance the dead chipmunk on the spatula and run up the bank and throw the chipmunk over. But the chipmunk isn’t yet experiencing full rigor mortis, so he is all floppy and his weight keeps shifting and he keeps falling off the spatula and I keep screaming. And see, one of the benefits of the shovel would have been avoiding the close-up view I keep getting of the poor, dead thing. The image of a dead chipmunk on a kitchen spatula is a dismal image indeed. I remember thinking, “If someone were watching me from a distance, they would think I was some pent-up housewife gone mad.”

After about ten minutes I finally manage to fling the beast over the fence.

Along with the spatula (in case you were wondering).

One Last Thing

As I mentioned, sometimes the television is on here, but in the other room. During the day, I occasionally get to hear a snippet of some lame soap opera. Sometimes I even hear lame things George Bush is saying, or lame commercials. But the soap opera on today, when I went in to grab a dictionary, was far from lame.

The scene (I have NO idea of the context) is this attractive middle-age black woman, talking to an older woman, also black, who is seated in a wheelchair. The older woman seems to be in some kind of nursing home. The younger woman says to the older woman:

“How could your own daughter do this to you?” (I presume she means putting the old lady in a home).

The older woman replies (as the camera closes in on her face):

“Because she is an atheist, thieving, crack-addict whore.”

I swear to you.

—ET

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Literary Production Numbers

British literary critic James Wood reviews The Oxford English Literary History, Vol. XII: 1960-2000: The Last of England?, and sharpens his knives:

Mind you, Stevenson’s three lines on A House for Mr Biswas make one glad that the rules [of the Oxford guide regarding what constitutes an “English” writer] allowed him to venture no further: “The novel uses its broad range of characters and their conflicts for comic effect, but they also offer extended insight into a complex, multiracial society, both hopeful and fearful for its future.” That sentence might be a Rorschach test: if you find nothing much the matter with it, you are an unsaved academic. Apart from the inconvenience of being largely untrue — there are almost no non-Indians of any significance in the novel — and its grating habit of sounding less like criticism than an AGM report, it is almost morally offensive that this should be the only description of that marvellous novel.

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Lightness? Wait.

When I went through a significant break-up in college (1989-1993), I would watch Miller’s Crossing and re-read The Unbearable Lightness of Being. When I had my big split two years ago, I went back to Kundera’s book. It meant a lot of different things to me in my 30s. The things that appeal in college years seem laughable when you’ve lived in (some semblance of) the real world for a while.

John Banville recently returned to the book after 20 years.

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In the MausHaus

I just landed in Orlando for the Parenteral Drug Association‘s annual meeting. It was my seventh flight this year. Fortunately, I don’t have any air-travel till June, when I head out to the BIO show. For some reason (possibly the coffee I had before the flight), I was pretty wired into the turbulence we had on takeoff and initial ascent.

But I mellowed out after a while, read most of Radiance, by Carter Scholz, and listened to the Pod for a little while. Boy, with Radiance, 100 Suns, and Intelligence Wars, you’d think I’ve started to pick up on a trend.

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Spring Fling

[There used to be a slideshow that accompanied this post, but my old ISP went down and took all my files with it. Stupidly, I never backed that stuff up. Oh, well. Them’s the virtual memories. . .]

Sitting on the PATH train into NYC from Hoboken, I look into my overnight bag and see a bottle of Tanqueray and a full prescription of Vicodin. I thought, “Wow, if I had some grass and a bottle of ether, I’d feel like Hunter S. Thompson’s intern!”

Friday was, to put it mildly, an eventful episode of The Gil Show. I had the day off from work (thanks, Christendom), but was suffering pretty mightily from an gum infection around one of my wisdom teeth. It’d been going on since Monday, but I was too macho/stupid to go to a dentist (there are two about 20 feet from my apartment). So, by Friday morning, I was suffering insanely from this pain, thinking, “Y’know, Gil, this is how They got David Lindsay.” Because that’s how I think, alright?

Went to one of the dentists at 9am. She got me an antibiotic prescription and told me to get back to her office at 1pm, so she could cut out a fold of my gum and clean out the area. I did so, and got to have Fun with Novocain, which I haven’t experienced since around 1987 (I don’t go to dentists much, unless it’s an emergency). Then she handed me a prescription for Vicodin. Before the minisurgery, I told her, “I plan on drinking pretty abusively this evening; is that a problem?”

“No. But don’t take the Vicodin if you’re drinking. And don’t drive or operate any heavy machinery when you’re taking the Vicodin.”

“Not even my forklift?” I asked, despite not owning one.

I was a bit worried about missing out on the evening, in which I planned to go to NYC to:

a) see one of my favorite singers perform;

b) attend my friends’ Spring Fling party (despite the 40 degree weather); and

c) get absolutely annihilated on gin & tonic and have some fun conversation with people I don’t get to see often.

Even though it wasn’t a huge amount of dental work, I was pretty wiped out by late afternoon. Didn’t feel like trying to eat anything solid, so I had an Atkins strawberry shake. Problem was, my mouth was still numb from the Novocain, which led to that curious sensation of drinking something and having no idea how much was in my mouth. It was pretty freaky.

The numbness wore off while I was driving to Hoboken, where I took the aforementioned PATH train to the 14th St. stop. It was a block away from the home of my friends who were throwing the party. I wanted to drop off the overnight bag (with “springtime clothing” for later in the evening) before getting some dinner and listening to some music.

Walked from their place on 13th St. to Crosby St., a block into SoHo. Not having eaten, I began getting some pretty intense chills, which worried me a bit, given that it was only 6:30 and I was planning for a pretty long night. The venue for the gig wasn’t open when I got there, so I went to an Australian restaurant called Eight Mile Creek, and ordered the soup of the day. It took awhile, so I ordered up a G&T, which meant I probably wouldn’t be having any Vicodin that evening.

Thing is, without the Novocain, I was back to experiencing some pretty intense pain in my mouth and my right ear. It hurt terribly to open my mouth much, and yawning was agony. Not fun. So I slurped my soup pretty ravenously, not having eaten for about 10-11 hours. Drank my gin. Saw Michael Imperioli walk down the sidewalk (because it’s New York, that’s why).

After that, I headed over to the gig, which was at a used bookstore that functions as a fundraiser for homeless people with AIDS. Do you call them AIDS patients? AIDS sufferers? AIDS victims? Every term carries a certain set of connotations, and I’m not sure which ones are inappropriate. I don’t personally know anyone with AIDS, although I recently published one of Samuel Delany’s novels on the subject (as well as a collection of his letters from 1984, a time when AIDS was still pretty much unidentified and wreaking havoc in parts of the queer community).

The gig was a triple-bill, but I was only there to see the first performer, a singer named Lori Carson. I first heard Lori’s singing back in 1994, when I lived in Annapolis and WHFS was a great indy (or Alter Native) radio station. She was with a band called the Golden Palominos, a rotating lineup sorta thing, led by a guy with the great name of Anton Fier. She sang on two GP records (which I consider two of the greatest get-it-on albums of all time, if you’re into a techo-rock-sex-funk vibe), then went off to do solo records. I have a tough time describing her voice, so let’s let these guys do it instead:

“…a super-high range that gives the effect of a young girl on helium…”

“…breathy, delicate vocals…”

“…a rawness beneath its soprano highs that make her songs resonate and tremble — she’s an unaffected singer who sounds like the bitter kid sister Joni Mitchell never had…”

The bookstore was SRO by the time I arrived. But the caf” area was open, and they were serving soup, which made me happy, since I was still afraid to risk solid food. So I noshed, bantered with a couple of women who were in a songwriting workshop that Lori Carson run out near her place in Long Island, and was given a second-row seat when the organizers decided to lift the “reserved” tags from those seats.

One thing about Lori Carson, and I don’t mean it in any looks-biased way, is that she photographs REALLY well, and doesn’t look as good in person. The proof of this is the cover of “Everything I Touch Runs Wild,” which has some pretty glamorous photography. In the flesh, she’s much earthier, though still strangely beautiful. I saw her play a few years ago at some music festival sponsored by Intel (ha-HA! No link for you!). Only about a dozen people came that night. Probably about 30-40 people at gig Friday (although some may”ve been there for the other acts).

She played a stylish-looking electric guitar, accompanied by an acoustic guitarist named Paul Pimsler. They only had about half an hour to play, so she only got in 6 or 7 songs. Most were recent, quiet, acoustic folk tunes. But she also played two older pieces: the title song to her second album, “Where It Goes,” and the very first song I ever heard her sing, “Little Suicides.”

I love certain pieces of art in a way that I don’t really understand. I think it might border on nostalgia (not a joy, but a having had joy). It was only in January, when I spent my birthday wandering through the Frick and the Met, staring at works by Rembrandt, that I started examining this feeling. A particular painting at the Frick, a self-portrait, caught me off guard. I was elated, looking at it, but the feeling more than just that of seeing a beautiful painting. It was like seeing an old friend, and perhaps it reflected the feeling of who I was in that moment of seeing Rembrandt the first time (the first Rembrandt picture I remember seeing (except for that cigar box one) was a philosopher meditating, on the cover of Gershom Scholem’s book on Kabbalah (not this edition, but a remaindered one that I bought years ago)). I’m not sure how to characterize that peculiar joy.

But I felt something similar when Lori started playing “Little Suicides” that night. “It happens in the smallest ways / It happens all the time . . .” she sang, and I was just transported, shedding years, remembering joy. (That last phrase puts me in mind of the closing lines from one of my favorite movies, where the narrator asks, “Is a memory something you have, or something you’ve lost?”)

The other old tune, “Where It Goes,” always made me think of a girl from college whom I knew as my One True Ex (you’ll have to find her tree in this forest). Our relationship, even when we were both involved with others long-term, was a strange affair. It was like a tango in which one of the partners is absent. For most of a decade, we continued to dance without the other. By the time we finally met again, we’d each become so familiar with our own steps that the other one seemed alien to us. The realities of who we’d become were not only superfluous to our dream-lives, they were inimical. And so we rapidly crumbled.

(Also, she was batshit and petty, and the last time we spent together was absolutely misery-inducing.)

But I thought of our old feelings while Lori sang, “I don’t know where it comes from / I don’t know where it goes / But clearly it’s going, gone / It’s time to let it / Time to move on…”

Then Lori was done singing, and I left for the party. I should write more about that, but the details are already a little vague (and somewhat boring). The things to know are:

a) I stuck with Tanqueray and tonic, eschewing the Vicodin;

b) One of my best friends came (at my invite), met people, and got hit on;

c) I impressed a girl by being able to discuss Churchland’s emergent principles of consciousness while personally bordering on unconsciousness;

d) I spent time in the company of friends, which always brings me joy;

e) I spoke the words, “Dude, I couldn’t stand up right now if you paid me”;

f) I put on a pair of bunny ears and tried to make a cartoony expression that REALLY didn’t photograph well; and

g) I got back to my friend’s place at 4am, crashed on her spare mattress, woke up at 7am, and decided to head back to NJ so I could sleep in my own bed.

And now the weekend is over and I’m trying to write an editorial for my magazine where I compare China’s coverup of SARS to the T-virus in Resident Evil. I’ll letcha know how it goes.

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Boil Gas

Last night, I went to the 92nd St. Y for a literary reading. Well, half of a literary reading. The writer I went there to meet was William Gass, one of the best writers in America (and therefore, cynically speaking, one of the least read). Mr. Gass and I had spoken a few times before, to discuss the projects Voyant was working on. I asked him for an introduction to The Place In Flowers Where Pollen Rests (since he and Paul West are friends, I thought he might offer to help us out), but he demurred, saying he was “introduction-ed out.” When it came time get blurbs for the book, Mr. Gass was suffering health problems and wasn’t able to help us out.

It was gratifying to see (okay: hear) him read last night. The selection was from a new novel. Referring to the labor that went into his previous novel, The Tunnel, he remarked, “I hope this one won’t take me 26 years to finish.” It was a chapter called “The Inhumanity Museum,” and it detailed the contents of his lead character’s top-floor rooms, in the home he shares with his elderly mother. The character, a music professor at an Ohio college, has accumulated newspaper clippings of all manner of human atrocities, in scrapbooks, pinned to walls, hanging from carefully placed strips of flypaper, “like niggers strung up on lampposts to teach someone a lesson.” At one point, reading a chronological section from the clippings, Mr. Gass broke from the reading and invited us to insert our own present-day atrocities. He chose one from a Feb. 15 newspaper, mentioning how several vials of smallpox were retained in labs, after the disease had been destroyed in the wild. Activists insisted on not killing the remaining samples, so as not to knowingly make any species on earth extinct.

The reading (35 minutes or so) was astonishing. The motif of the work was that the lead character’s fear that the world would end had been replaced by the fear that the world would live. Mr. Gass pressed utterly beautiful sentences into the service of a character’s unremitting hatred. I was reminded of his Paris Review interview from the late 1977, where he said,

“What is psychologically best for a writer is what produces his best work. I suspect that in order for me to produce my best work I have to be angry. At least I find that easy. I am angry all the time . . . My work proceeds almost always from a sense of aggression. And usually I am in my best working mood when I am, on the page, very combative, very hostile. That’s true even when I write praise, as is often the case . . . I also take considerable pleasure in giving obnoxious ideas the best expression I can.”

The articulation Mr. Gass brought to the character’s rage was sharply contrasted by the evening’s other reader, T. Coraghessan Boyle, who treated the upper east side audience like a drinking crowd at a comedy club. Mr. Boyle strode to the podium in black Tommy Hilfiger sweatpants and red Chuck Taylors, and tried to “warm us up” with witty banter, or a simulacra thereof.

Mr. Boyle proceeded to read a chapter from his new novel, Drop City, about a fictional commune in 1970. His reading was, to put it bluntly, atrocious. The sentences were leaden, serving only to tell the reader/listener “what happened next.” And what happened next is that the lead character gets the shits after shooting and cooking a deer. The audience found lines like “He needed toilet paper. NOW,” to be the heights of humor. During Mr. Gass’s reading, they only laughed during a section in which the narrator implores the rotting world to “fuck on,” beginning each paragraph with that sentiment. As though, in 2003, an old man saying “fuck” is cause for schoolyard titters.

Mr. Boyle’s reading went disastrously well. The audience ate him up, as though he was “the poet and prophet of our age” (fuck you, LA Times), rather than a second-rate screenwriter. Because that’s what his reading of Drop City was: a screenplay. There was nothing in the writing that needed to be written, rather than spoken. No interior life beyond the cardboard, easy sentiments of his commune-dwellers. Bad writing.

Problem is, most everyone was there to see him, not Mr. Gass. After the readings, there was a book signing/wine reception in the art gallery, where two lines formed. Mr. Gass’s line had perhaps 25 people, while more than a hundred waited to see Mr. Boyle. I got on Mr. Gass’s line, and found myself engaged in a strange conversation.

Two elderly women stood behind me, and one of them mentioned, “He seems so angry. I thought his reading would turn pleasant at some point, or that the character would find something good in the world.” Her companion clucked, and agreed that it had been rather depressing.

I turned to talk to them, and said, “Well, he’s fueled by rage. It’s inside a lot of what he’s written.”

One asked, “Has he written many books?”

I was puzzled. I wondered how two old women find themselves at a reading of William Gass, then actually get on line to talk to him, rather than just head home after hearing his beautifully angry writing, if they had no idea who he was or how much he’d written over the years. It turned out, of course, that there was a story. There always is, I guess.

One of the women brought the other for moral support (I didn’t get either of their names). Turns out that her daughter married Mr. Gass’s son many years ago. From what I gathered, they had two children (Mr. Gass’s grandkids), but there was a divorce (several, actually), and he had become estranged from that branch of the family. I’m not sure, but it may be that he never saw the grandchildren. But, the woman told me, “At the wedding, out of 150 people, he only saw fit to talk to me. He was so interesting to talk with, but I found it so odd that he wouldn’t talk to anyone else at the reception.”

She brought photographs of the grandchildren with her. “But I don’t know how he’s going to react to seeing them.”

“Hmm. Maybe I should go first,” I said, “just in case he flies into a rage and storms out of here.” They laughed, a bit nervously.

Eventually, I got to speak to Mr. Gass. He remembered me from our brief phone conversations, which I found gratifying, and said he”d be pleased to give me a blurb for The Immensity of the Here and Now. I gave him my card and some postcards from Voyant’s other books. He signed my copy of the first trade paperback edition of Omensetter’s Luck. I’m not particularly fixated on getting books signed, but I thought it”d be a good idea to come prepared. And I wasn’t going to carry The Tunnel with me, given the back pain that would have accompanied it.

Later, while I chatted with a woman whose brother brought her to the reading, the two old women came by. “He said he was happy to see me, and took the photos. He even wrote, ‘Thanks for the pictures of the grandkids, Bill Gass.'”

“He signed mine, ‘William H. Gass,'” I told her. “So that’s probably a friendly gesture on his part.”

“Do you think so?” She seemed happy, so I left the evening with a smile. Even though I was mightily pissed off at the legion of poseurs who had come to worship Captain Bullshit and his limp prose.

But I’m not bitter.