Moment Magnitude

Where Have I Been?

I have not vanished from this virtual world.

The real world has occupied so much of my time, that I have been left with almost no brain energy to write or update.

Okay, maybe I updated a little. Intrepid readers, take note: Some newer images in one of the photo albums. Comments management on this wildly popular post. Tweaking the first chapter on Plot Participant - heck, tweaking the entire archiving mechanism for Plot Participant. I dare you to go and hunt.

Rather than go into a lengthy diatribic/diatribical (I don't have my Websters dictionary with me; note to self: Self, bring your second copy out here) essay, I shall opt for an enumerated list of activities that have kept me from writing:

1. The IRS audit. I completed the third and final session of the first round of this damned process - the piecemeal review of all receipts and income for 2004. The next step is an appeal. I wrote the appeal request. Done. How's this for irony? The IRS agent admitted to me at the end of our last meeting, that if she were me, she would do exactly what I am doing (i.e., challenging the IRS, reviewing the tax return and receipts, making an appeal). So folks, take note. If you are an independent contractor, and you get audited, fight it. Be appropriate, but stay firm, take one thing at a time, and push back.

2. The Savior, my canny, dear friend as substitute-brother, convinced me to take the New York real estate sales agent licensing course and exam. I've been freelance writing, etc. for him since July, so... I did it, via the NYREI. I could write sitcom episodes out of those classes. Still, I took it dead-serious, studied well and diligently, passed the course, passed the state exam, and am going to work for one of the big-ass agencies, out of its Bridgehampton office. If a former Ralph Lauren supermodel from the late-197Os and 1980s works here, then I suppose I can do it too. Seems as though there are a few Mets fans in the house. That bodes well.

3. I got me a wee place in East Hampton. We're calling it the Ho-Ho House. Up in the Northwest (as it is known on the South Fork), and a stroll away from Sammy's Beach (glorious in the mornings - the Great Peconic Bay smacks of Winslow Homer), I am renting it from a British gal (mentioned here earlier), whose surname begins exactly as mine does: "Ho..." Ergo. Photos to come.

4. It's the last season of The Sopranos. I watch. I love. I am devastated.

5. I also watch Entourage. And The Tudors. These two are not as brilliant as they were (the former), or ought to be (the latter).

6. I made the mistake of watching an episode of one of the early try-out round episodes of American Idol. Let me say this right here. I have never watched that show before. Ever. I watched that one episode, and pow! That crap is crack. I am hooked. Strange, a core of my sharpest friends are long-time hooked. Go and roam here and here, by way of excellent NYC fan-based examples.

7. I started reading that Russian novel in translation, whose main character is a Sister Pelagia, and it didn't grab me. However, I read the first paragraph of Alice McDermott's Child of My Heart, and I stopped, until I realized I was holding my breath. I chose it because it is set out here, in East Hampton, and I was gratified to remind myself that Ms. McDermott won the National Book Award for her novel, Charming Billy. I dove into Child. I could not stop reading it. It made my chest hurt. I'm telling everyone to read it. I ordered a copy from Amazon and had it sent to my mother, for Mother's Day.

8. I had jury duty last week. I've been called five or six times in my life, been empaneled three times (I think), served one time, was sequestered that one time, and we sound up hung. This time I was empaneled, questioned, not selected, and then dismissed. Sprung. Clear for the next six years.

9. I had a date, egad. Maybe a sort-of date. An older gentleman. Whaddaya know, I am so not ready. I just, I just...didn't feel it. I am convinced I am still drawn to men some nine-ish years younger. This fellow is witty, intelligent, and has great stories. But I guess I still gotta go younger. The weather is only starting to move toward summer. Only starting. Patience.

10. I am re-reading Pride and Prejudice (apologies again to Sister Pelagia). It's still so fresh. Here in the country, where land and property are all, Jane Austen's novel manages to resonate - some two hundred years later.

Good grief. This has to be enough for now. I'm pooped. I want to take pictures and post them. I have not abandoned this space. I'll be back sooner.

Summer Reading 2007

I have selected - and purchased(!) some of the novels I plan to read this summer.

They are:

Alice McDermott's Child of My Heart. This looks to be the one, decent novel whose setting is the East End.

Jincy Willett's Winner of the National Book Award. Yes, that's the title, audacious, isn't it? I have had a tough time reading, much less liking the real National Book Award Winners, and this ersatz-titled volume looks enticing - New England twin sisters are the protagonists.

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. After the resurgent-ongoing fascination with this timeless story, I think I need another dive back into the original.

Lily Tuck's The News from Paraguay. Speaking of the National Book Award, I've had this volume (a signed first printing no less) on my shelf for almost three years. I need to give it a solid attempt.

Last summer, I read Colm Toibin's The Master. I adored every single page of it. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize (never mind the Man), and I am a sucker for Booker Award winners. I believe Kiran Desai's book is the latest winner - maybe I'll get to it.

I've read many more Bookers than NBA or Pulitzer Prize winners - although the summer of 2005, I read Philip Caputo's Acts of Faith (brilliant in places, and trite in others, I thought).

I did get around to reading Richard Ford's Independence Day - which is magnificent (better than The Sportswriter - to me anyhow). His third in the Frank Bascombe series, The Lay of the Land will be out in paperback in June. I may add it to this summer's list.

Right now, I've started Boris Akunin's Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog, a suggestion from a friend. Maybe that's the first of the warm weather lot.

As I finish any or all of these, I'll add them to the list on the left.

Bookmarkers

A longtime publishing friend sent me one of those compile-info-about-yourself emails, to which I was to respond by supplying a list of my favorite books.

Whenever I am asked for that, I sigh. My favorites? It's more like a top eighty-five favorites. Or more.

This time, however, I drafted the list according to the time-line of my life. Which books hallmark significant times in my life, as well as I can remember them? The first book(s) I recall as a child? The books that resonated with (or that I was simply reading at the time) specific growth stages, or specific ch-ch-changes?

Anyhow, here it is, beginning with early childhood recollections, with an augmentation or three:

Dr. Seuss: Green Eggs and Ham. I could list all of the Dr. Seuss titles, but this one always made my brother and me laugh the hardest. We were living in Okinawa, and my mother bought a subscription plan. When the next book came in the mail, we went out of our minds with excitement. When Mom read Green Eggs and Ham to us the first time, she couldn't do it straight, and we three laughed so hard, we cried. Strange, I cannot recall any of the Golden Books' titles, though I know we had them.

Frances Hodgson Burnett: A Little Princess. My mother read this one to me, and I remember that it was so, so sad. But, oh how sweet that redemptive ending is.

Marguerite Henry: Misty of Chincoteague. A little girl's fascination and right of passage with horses.

Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Madeleine L'Engle: A Wrinkle in Time. One word: "Tesseract."

Gertrude Chandler Warner: The Boxcar Children. Mrs. Hopper, my grade school teacher when we lived in Germany, read Twain, L'Engle, Chandler Warner, and others aloud to us. She had a warm, southern accent, and read just one chapter each week. Often we would protest, and remain on tenterhooks until the next reading. Once, we convinced her to read two chapters in a row. That was a good day.

Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Secret Garden.

Louis May Alcott: Little Women.

Kenneth Grahame: The Wind in the Willows.

Robert Ruark: The Honey Badger. I was in fifth or sixth grade, still in Germany, when I read this one. I probably shouldn't have. It's subject was too mature for me at the time, and I suppose my parents should have kept it away. Still, we were a family of voracious readers, and maybe my parents didn't notice. We didn't watch much German television. The black and white programs seemed odd. I remember absurdist mussel munchen (garden gnome-like characters) cartoons and depictions of surgical procedures.

Taylor Caldwell: Dear and Glorious Physician. Oh, the dubious influence of a strict, Catholic upbringing. Caldwell's tales of Satan and exorcisms scared the crap out of me.

A spate of fast reads by Josephine Tey, Anya Seton, and Daphne DuMaurier followed. We had just returned to New York. I was finishing grammar school at St. Patrick's in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

John Knowles: A Separate Peace.

J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings. All of them. I wished there were more.

Rosemary Rogers: Sweet Savage Love. I would argue the preeminent bodice-ripper. I was in high school by now, and very pubescent. I would race through my in-class algebra exercises (so easy!), and then hide this book inside my textbook. The phrase "throbbing manhood" was etched in my mind at the age of fifteen. Thank you, Ms. Rogers.

Ann Rice: Interview with the Vampire. Where Rosemary Rogers ignited my romantic imagination, this was the first book to make me feel sex on the page. Too bad all of the sequels suck. Suck.

John Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy of Dunces. Time to come of age. My first job, at the age of sixteen, was in a B. Dalton Bookseller in the Eatontown Mall, New Jersey. I was devastated to leave New York and move to what I called "hick town." Books saved me. Confederacy paved the way for a years-later romp through most of Walker Percy's novels.   

John Irving: The World According to Garp. And many of Irving's other, earlier novels. College, the late 70s, drugs, sex, and Studio.

William Styron: Sophie's Choice.

Pat Conroy: The Great Santini. Close to home, that one. (Just thinking about Conroy's The Prince of Tides makes me want to scream. That book disappointed in crucial and fundamental ways.)

Mark Helprin: Winter's Tale. A gorgeous, heartbreaking, otherworldly imagining of the great New York City.

Tom Wolfe: The Right Stuff.

Tom Wolfe: Bonfire of the Vanities. Or, as one friend called it: "Vampire of the Bonities." Fresh out of college, I'd landed my first publishing job.

Jay MacInerney: Bright Lights, Big City. I was living in Cambridge, and discovered that MacInerney had been a graduate student at my alma mater when I was an undergrad. Who knew? I hustled down to the Harvard Coop and bought a first printing, as published, in paperback.

Nabokov: Ada or Ardor.

T.C. Boyle: World's End. Magic. And so begins the influence of Rust Hills, then fiction editor for Esquire Magazine.

Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Larry McMurtry: Lonesome Dove.

Richard Price: Clockers. "The self-cleaning oven."

Graham Swift: Waterland. And all his other novels too.

Cormack McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses. But not all his other novels too.

Hemingway: The Garden of Eden.

Michael Ondaatje: The English Patient. How in blue blazes were they going to make a film out of that? But they did, and oh, how they did.

Peter Hoeg: Smilla's Sense of Snow. Part III: The City, the last page of Chapter One. Find it, read it. Really.

Sebastian Junger: The Perfect Storm.

Mark Jenkins: To Timbuktu.

Don DeLillo: Underworld. More than 800 pages long (and its type set tight), I never wanted it to end.

Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin.

Arundhati Roy: The God of Small Things. The ending made me weep. A few hours later, I read the ending again, just so I could bawl my eyes out some more.

Javier Marias: A Heart So White. Wow.

Monique Truong: The Book of Salt. I read it during a month-long stay in Paris

David Sedaris: Me Talk Pretty One Day. 

Adam Gopnik: Paris to the Moon.

Colm Toibin: The Master.

Richard Ford: Independence Day. I ain't done with it yet, but it has to be here.

Maybe I'll read my friend's list here. Maybe, I'll ask another friend, after Sundance, to compile such a list and read it here.

Special Relativity

I am reading Richard Ford's Independence Day. The first-person main character, Frank Bascombe, is reflecting on his failed marriage (as he did in Ford's earlier novel, The Sportswriter, Independence Day is a continuation of said character's story), and this popped me straight between the eyes:

If I'd thought back in '81 that Ann would get remarried, I'd have fought it like a Viking instead of giving in to divorce like a queasy, uninspired saint. And I'd have fought it for a damn good reason: because no matter where she held the mortgage papers, she completely supposed my existence. My life was (and to some vague extent still is) played out on a stage in which she's continually in the audience (whether she's paying attention or not). All my decent, reasonable, patient, loving components were developed in the experimental theater of our old life together, and I realized that by moving house to Deep River she was striking most of the components, dismembering the entire illusion, intending to hook up with another, leaving me with only faint, worn-out costumes to play myself with.

Oh, Mr. Ford, you are good.

Something about how after I break up with someone, a lover, a friend, a family member, I remain mindful of how they might react to my ongoing and new activities. I have an internal, imagined audience, and I create in my mind the separated-one's reactions, based upon my history with that/those persons. 

Sometimes I think I do a specific thing just to imagine how they might or must respond. It's a fool's game, and vain, I'm embarrassed to admit. It does fade over time. Still, the pinpricks of memory, and to a degree, longing, color what I conjure in a day's moment for my spectral (former) observers.

This, my own introspection, reminded me of something I learned once about Einstein, about the nature of the observer and the observed. I found this:

Events that one observer considers happening in his present might already be in the past or still in the future with respect to another. Do these events "exist" at that moment? If they exist from the point of view of one observer, how can they be part of a future that has not happened yet for another? No matter how much we try to weasel our way out of this conundrum, we'll have to accept that all these events, future and past, "exist" in some sense. Mathematically, they are just points in the four-dimensional space-time continuum. But now..., we have to admit that the existence of all these events is physical...All events, past, present, and future, exist.

I will try to illustrate some of my examples. Whether or not I can be perfectly honest, I doubt. But still.

I will preface these examples with today's "democratization of technology," as GV Wonder often says. Anyone with access to a fast modem and computer port can type my name into an Internet search engine, and probably will get pushed, well...here.

I might flatter myself that an old lover, maybe the one living in the UK, can see for himself that my life has continued in the years since, that my life is not the mirror in which I allowed him to admire his own reflection. 

Or take those who have hurled the harshest of epithets, who, in the fiercest of rages, cursed me claiming, that I am miserable, lonely, friendless, liberal (oh my), and more. Well, they might see that they were misguided at best.

I do not suppose for a second that anything I do might inspire another's introspection, but perhaps they will examine their own behavior, think twice, maybe learn something. Or not.

In truth, it's not up to me. Real or imagined, the watcher or the watched, the incidence does recede, and gives way to the regular, tangible, grab-it-by-the-collar existence.

Almost The Last Single Woman

Wow. This just-announced book deal popped up on Publishers Lunch/Publishers Marketplace list (the paid-subscription service newsletter to the publishing industry) last night:

NON-FICTION: GENERAL/OTHER

Former New Line executive Cindy Guidry's THE LAST SINGLE WOMAN IN AMERICA, humorous true-life stories of her often painful personal misadventures in Hollywood and with her wacky family, as the author -- in her forties, single, childless, and careerless -- explores the complicated state of affairs of the modern woman and our culture at large, to Julie Doughty at Dutton, in a pre-empt, by Gillian MacKenzie of the Gillian MacKenzie Agency (world). [email protected]. Film/TV: [email protected].

I expect that the book will be available within the next twelve months, assuming nothing goes haywire.

And I think to myself, this sunny, chilly, city morning: I am not alone.

Over on Plot Participant, Chapter One of the novel has been posted. I plan to post Chapter Two (enter Paris) and maybe Three by the end of the weekend.

Bar Stories

So. Last Thursday, in the way early evening, damn it gets dark so fast these days, I met one of the gals at Employees Only. I'll call her CeeCee. She's a showstopper. Curvaceous, alabaster skin, a fountain of thick, brown-auburn hair, red lips, animated hands. A superb raconteur. Months earlier, I met her through Surfer Girl, who joined us at the our preferred, curved end of the bar. Dushan, the bartender-extraordinaire, worked his alchemy.

I had walked over from a late afternoon business meeting at Pastis, where I had one of the best hamburgers in my life: big, salty-savory-seared on the outside, good and juicy on the inside. Perfection. A burger so good, you don't notice the fries, or frites, on the side.

My full belly grounded the almost ceaseless procession of filled-to-the-brim flutes of Prosecco.

CeeCee regaled us with this shape-edged story. She was at The Spotted Pig, seated at the bar with girlfriend, one of the rainy evenings last week, the end of one of those days when all New Yorkers are in pissy, bite-me moods.

Her friend got up to hit the head, and a couple standing too close edged in on the empty seat, although it was covered by her friend's jacket, the usual marker that indicates "taken."

Not this time. The female member of the couple insisted on making a grab. And CeeCee would have none of it.

"Sorry. That seat is taken."

The woman got testy, insisting that she sit. "I'm pregnant!"

(Apologies right now to all my girlfriends who recently announced their second trimesters.)

"My friend is just in the loo," CeeCee responded. "And will be returning."

Apparently, the woman began to shriek. The bartender, whom CeeCee knows, looked up and over to her.

She said, "Now you're too close to me. And you're yelling. I am going to close my eyes, and after the count of five, you will be gone."

It was a command.

CeeCee closed her eyes. She held up her hand, five fingers splayed, and then, folding down one finger at a time, starting with the pinkie, "Five, four, three, two, one."

She opened her eyes. And the woman was till there, too close. "You're still here."

Surfer Girl and I listened, eyes wide. I started to laugh.

The woman's other half, a man, came up, and appeared millimeters from chest-butting CeeCee. The bartender intervened, "Sir?"

CeeCee's friend returned to the bar. As the couple bristled before the bartender, CeeCee whispered that the shrieking woman was pregnant. And her friend, without pausing, said loudly, "Pregnant? I thought she was fat." Ouch.

The couple stormed out. 

That was a good one. In the midst of our ensuing chatter, CeeCee and Surfer Girl mentioned that Dushan and his partner just had their book published.

"Really?"

When we three called him over, he heard the following sentences:

"She's a book publisher."

"Yes, I was a book publisher."

"She writes about us."

"Sure. I could write about your book and post it."

Dushan smiled, turned, and presented me with a copy of You Didn't Hear It From Us: Two Bartenders Serve Woman the Truth About Men, Making an Impression, and Getting What You Want. I asked him to sign it, natch.

We returned to our various stories. Surfer Girl had been out all the previous night, in a silver Rolls Royce Phantom, taken to the re-opening of The Russian Tea Room (!). Of course Liz Taylor Jr. was there, enabling the shenanigans.

CeeCee received a call. And Argentine gentleman, a paramour, would drive by. He did, and she would vanish, dancing through the rest of the night.

CeeCee's friend from The Spotted Pig story had arrived, model-tall and British-charming, she spilled various contents from her bag. Surfer Girl and she planned to head off to some other party.

Dushan made me a final cocktail, buttressing it with a couple of tall glasses of water. Something I call a Campari-hari (like the Mata Hari in his book). I sipped half, as the gals closed our "tab," a paltry sum given the number of drinks.

My phone rang, and when I looked at the number, I smiled. Tennis Pro. Tingle. I took the call outside. A minute later, Surfer Girl handed me my jacket, bag, umbrella, and air-kissed me goodbye.

I walked the mile or so home, laughing with Tennis Pro, right up to my front door.

What of Dushan's book? I breezed my way through it the next day, on the subway, later finishing it off before I nodded off to sleep.

It's fast and funny. Parts ring true, others don't. I think it aims for folks who mostly seek one-night stands. And it feels as though it skews to a younger audience. Still it's clever, in a pop-psych way: Be present, accept that you are desirable, learn to flirt, take care of yourself first and foremost, and remember that men want sex. What we women do should be our choice.

Nothing earth-shattering, but a sweet reminder, and worth the read.

Once thing I will take away. whenever I am in Employees Only, or any other seasoned bar for that matter, I will watch the bartenders with renewed interest, and try to see what they see, from the other side.

What Would MacGyver Do?

I hadn't gone to a book reading in a while.

Chris Kaye, a writer whose acquaintance I made in the last year, sent word about a reading he was scheduled to give - at an Irish pub in Murray Hill. He has an essay in a book, titled, What Would MacGyver Do?: True Stories of Improvisational Genius in Everyday Life. (Not sure about the use of the question mark followed by the colon to separate the title from subtitle there.)

Chris' essay is called, "Sic Transit Rodentia," and in it he recounts the tale of an enterprising mouse who occupied his NYC apartment, much to his then-wife's horror. I won't give away more than that. If you're interested, hit Amazon. I'd read the essay well before the book was published, and it's solid. Chris and I have discovered our mutual dislike of the gerund, and writers' over-reliance on adverbs. Is that pointy-headed enough?

I arrived at the pub minutes before Chris read. He was first up. We exchanged quick hello's before he was called up to the microphone.

The shepherd of the collection (ah, collections: anathema to most publishing imprints anymore) was an editor of Esquire Magazine. Following Chris, two other contributors to the volume would read.

The crowd of not more than twenty-five people, most bespectacled in dark-rimmed glasses (yes, me too, guilty), turned to the back of the wood-plank-floored room, those standing gently moving their weight from one foot to the other.

Chris' clever essay hit the mark with scattered chuckles and laughs among the group - which turned out to be friends and family.

The second writer to read, Susan Burton, a young blond-bobbed (bespectacled, yes), read her essay, "A Girl's Guide to Mending the Unmendable."

(Let's just say that the improvisational genius as given in the subtitle suggests a wider toolkit application than actual, physical items at any of the writer's disposal.)

Miss Burton was introduced as a contributor (I think I heard it right, apologies if not) to National Public Radio's "This American Life," the radio show adored by literary types, and that airs quirky, literary, often comic, and often poignant stories. It was a platform for David Sedaris before he became a rock star.

Her story was about how she got over a hometown summer love. I didn't start when she described riding her a mountain bike along the foothills, but I did jerk-to when she mentioned a semi-organic supermarket called Alfalfa's. (If it's the one I'm thinking of, it's a Wild Oats now.)

Boulder, Colorado.

Then she mentioned rich white wives who shopped there, with their multi-carat diamond wedding rings.

Bang. That's Boulder alright. Boulder, the town of remnant hippies, who get up in your face and in their smug, self-satisfied, sanctimonious ways, preach to you about how to live your life. Those, coupled with wealthy residents, who would just as soon keep the Mexican laborers living outside Boulder city limits. Classic N.I.M.B.Y.

Those attitudes drove me nuts during the three-plus years I lived there (running an imprint of yep, an NYC-based book publishing company). The mountains are glorious, the sunsets over the ridges are jaw-dropping for the grandeur of red and orange colors behind the shadow of the Rockies. But the people there? With the exception of a select few friends, European ex-pats, the serious outdoor professionals, and another subset of professors or researchers at the university, the population of that town (make no mistake - that place is a town) made me grind my teeth.

Anyway. Miss Burton held forth, her story self-conscious and youthful, sounding more like an unfinished work than a fully-realized piece.

The last reader, Stewart Engesser, was introduced, and among his attributes (something about science - I wish I had listened better, dammit), the final was that he drove all the way from Maine. Now, anyone who has lives in the great United States west knows that long drive is defined by one that exceeds ten hours. Maine to New York? Heck, that ain't nothing.

Mr. Engesser was laugh-out-loud funny: his story's set-up was pitch-perfect, and his clever turns of phrase maintained that tone right up to its ending. It's called: "Como se Dice Acetylene Torch?" (imagine the Spanish language use of one upside down question mark at the beginning of the title, and and upright one at the end), and is about an almost hapless auto-breakdown on the Henry Hudson Parkway (em, more commonly, the West Side Highway), after a long night of drinking - in a seersucker suit (ah, Bill Styron's Stingo).

I didn't stay much longer afterward. Apparently, an NPR journalist was there to interview Mr. Engesser, something I learned that Mr. Engesser arranged himself - he's promoting another of his works.

And I thought: Missed opportunity for the publisher. Where was the publicist? Why hadn't the publicist used the opportunity, "MacGyver'd" the situation to get wider promotion, interviews with the other two writer-readers, right there and then, for NPR?

Alas. My take-away is this. I love book publishing. The industry was so good to me for more than two decades. But there, in that dark-lit, booze-patina'd pub, all I could think, was: "How quaint."

Perhaps the book will sell out it initial print run, whatever that may be. Perhaps it will make it into a second printing. But more likely, it will be a nicety, a lovely little book that never stood the chance of reaching a mainstream audience, for all its mainstream title, and for all its talented, well-connected, contributors.

Chris Kaye will produce killer screenplays. I have a strong feeling about that.

Maybe Miss Burton will write whatever is supposed to be the next "it" after chick-lit.

And Mr. Engesser should be on camera, or behind one. Oh wait, he does that already.

Here's hoping. For more.

   

Sister Blog

I am on the brink of creating a sister to Moment Magnitude.

There, as promised or threatened (depending on who you are in my world), I will serialize the novel-in-progress (but recently on hold), as a way to jump start the writing, and to create a community, an audience who might appreciate the work (or not - I don't flatter myself that it is a pearl).

The challenge right now is what to call it. The sister-blog, that is.

After attempting to open my mind, which has been difficult, given this lousy head cold, and its pernicious refusal to vacate my sinuses, I doodled various words and phrases, and distilled them to two.

They are:

No Name Novel (since the title is a working one, and I'm not sure I like it anymore).

Plot Participant (which suggests the community who will kick my butt in various directions - I hope - to make the work better).

Feel free to send me your thoughts, whether in the Comments section here, or by email (those of you who have the address).

Meantime, I have to poke around and establish the weblog's format and design.

Yee-ha.

Hold On To Your Ego

Once, probably two decades ago, when I was starting my career in publishing, my friend Carter Roberts met me for dinner in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

As a young acquisitions editor for Prentice Hall, I was calling on science professors at Cambridge's most eminent universities, seeking new authors. Carter had completed his business degree over off Soldiers Field Road, and had secured his first job, very corporate, at Gillette (I think). I had a little crush on Carter. I think I always will. I paid close attention to anything he said to me, and remember pieces, sentences, these many years.

He asked me about my work, and I told him.

"You know," he said. "I am jealous of you. You have the best job." He has one helluva bass baritone voice, that one, and at the time a strange boyishness which reminded of a less homicidal Norman Bates.

Carter Anthony Perkins

I thought he was kidding me, in that subtle, southern, deadpan way he has.

"I talk to scientists, Carter. I think most people would find that boring."

"But it's not." his tone, soft as it was, suggested that there could be no argument.

Sometimes, the work could be boring, but in truth, I did find it intriguing, since doors to the offices of some of the world's biggest brains were open to me.

"I figure," I said," that if they can describe to me what they do, their work, in a way that I can understand it, then I think that is the first sign suggesting they can write a book."

"Don't you see? You have the opportunity to learn something new everyday. Most people don't have that."

Today, I remain astonished at the insight, the wisdom of that observation. He was right.

Many years later, I worked with Murray Gell-Mann on slight revisions for the paperback edition of his beloved book, The Quark and the Jaguar. I remember reading it, struggling through the sentences that sought to make accessible the deep ideas he had about the nature of nature, about complexity and emergence. I was often confused, and made annotations in the margins, question marks, squiggled sentences and scrawls.

This was Murray Gell-Mann, however, the Nobel Laureate in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. Think quarks. I started working with him in New York. But it wasn't until I called on him at his beautiful home in Santa Fe that I understood what it meant to be in the presence of greatness, greatness of mind.

Our meetings, and our work, were not about me, much as I attempted to describe the confusion I experienced when reading through various of the passages in his book. I parked my ego at the door, and opened all my senses, because, recalling Carter's remark (as I did and have on regular occasion), I knew I would learn something everyday I was in the presence of Murray.

My mother had moved to New Mexico by then, and I would stay with her. She would tell or remind me, "Murray called," since I gave him her number, the surefire way to get me once I landed. Mom would put on her best Brooklyn accent. I think she rather liked talking to him those brief moments. It takes a New York ear to recognize another New York ear, even two time zones west.   

Here is what I learned, although my memory is faulty. I am sure I've synthesized Murray's explanations, but I own my memories, my interpretation of them. I am fond and protective of both.

I learned that some species of snake that lives in African continent is blind, but not so, for the remnant of its eyes are part of its biology. It has vestigial eyes.

That's one helluva term: vestigial eyes. Sometimes my eyes feel vestigial.

He also told me his notions of the source of my surname. He thought it might be a Middle English word, perhaps spelled "yddr." But he seemed more certain that my name was the name of a river in England, and that my name described the milder of two rivers, the ancient "yddr" meaning mild, or milder. There is a river in England that bears my name, although I have not seen it. I suppose it is a mild river. Why would I think otherwise if I had not been there and seen it myself?

Something more that I've learned since that learned encounter. Just about everybody can show me something I don't already know. If I exercise patience and careful questions, I will learn something. I kid that a back hoe operator knows more about back hoes than I will ever know.

The Tennis Pro and I chatted this week. And he said that one of his clients was a "choochberry," his word, part of his personal vernacular. I asked him what he meant by it. Instead of providing his own working definition - hey, I like made-up words almost as much as those that the OED defines with rigor - he veered off onto a tangent, about how he teaches people, many wealthy and influential, who most times are caught up in their special universes, in which they are the master, the one in charge, the operator and controller. (This is my extrapolation, tbt.)

When he has them on the court, his domain, they have to give in, give up, and allow him to teach them. In the process, he pokes around a bit, tests them. I can imagine his gentle queries. He is relaxed, but seems to be perceptive that way. Like The Savior, his particular genius is contained in his body. But he has the presence, if not the temerity, to open his mind, and learn something or other from his clients.

In that sense, we are similar. And in that conversation, I realized that we shared a common behavior. We both know when to put ourselves aside - even though he is as much an expert in tennis as I am in editing and book publishing - and pay attention. Because we like to learn new, well...stuff.

Memoir is Faulty

My memory is faulty. I have written that before. I have said it out loud too.

As anyone knows from watching any of the myriad police procedurals on television (whether filmed entertainment or "reality"), eyewitness accounts are unreliable.

And then there's James Frey. Poor James Frey. Right. I haven't read A Million Little Pieces. But I have read some of the sturm und drang swirling around the many fictitious accounts he set forth as part of his monster-selling memoir.

I wonder, has anyone checked The Smoking Gun - the on-line outfit that "outed" Frey's lies? How straight up and honest are they? How accurate are their sources? True, they collect all sorts of "official" documents, but I am a skeptical reader. Hmmm...

And then there's Oprah. She gave him a good tongue lashing. And to Frey's publisher too, Nan A. Talese (musn't omit her middle initial). I sit on the German Book Office advisory board with the eminent Ms. Talese, although she has not attended any meetings in the last two years. She came once, though. Tall, imperious (to me), I remember that she aspirated her vowels.

I saw her more recently, at a distance, at The Moth Ball, accompanying her husband - okay, the genius author, Gay.

But basta, as my nonnas might say.

Last Saturday night, the gang was out party-hopping, night-crawling. I caught Liz Taylor Jr. at Moomia, sporting her brilliant, new Jimmy Choo handbag. Yes, it did smell good. Better, almost than that new car smell.

I chatted with Surfer Girl, mobile-to-mobile, before heading to Moomia, expecting to catch up with her irascible self through the course of the night. That was not to be.

Liz Jr. dashed out after a couple of hours at Moomia, I thought to meet up with Surfer Girl and head up to Pacha. I went to Pacha - god, I hate that place - I vow never to go into that cavernous, dark, grotesque, "fun house" again.

Surfer Girl and Liz Jr. were nowhere to be found - as I if could have spied them in that miasma.

The next morning, after I inquired, they each sent me emailed missives about their shenanigans that night. Mind you, they were together. Here is what each wrote:

First, from Surfer Girl:

Dear Hooker, old buddy of mine,

My best friend and her husband decided to hang in the city for a while after the hockey game, so after dinner, I ran up to meet them and talk them into staying in for the night at my place.

We met Liz Jr., and the boys at 007 (never heard of it) around 11 p.m. It was packed, so we went to Pastis. As we were walking, we ran into Liz Jr's friend, the UK-Guy, and his friend, Cute-Guy. As we were now one big happy group, we stormed Pastis and took over. Three drinks later, we went off to Cielo. At four in the morning we were getting kicked out, but none of us were ready to be done with the evening. At the corner, we ran into guys handing out fliers for an after-hours club.

The six of us jumped into a limo, and off we went. Half of us dropped out. I made out with Cute-Guy at one point in the club. I might hang out with him this weekend. I would have brought him home, but my friend (see start) was staying over.

Cute-Guy had to take the train back home to Princeton, and it was about eight a.m. by then. The three of us who were left stayed to dance some more, watch the freak show, until ten a.m., or something like that. So yesterday, my friend and I lounged all day and into the night, watching movies on the television, smoking ciggies, and drinking Gatorade.

Now, what I want to know is: What happened to Surfer Girl's friend's husband? And who the hell is this Cute-Guy with whom she was snogging?

Second version, from Liz Taylor, Jr.:

Honestly. It started as an innocent dinner at Giorgione 508. We came to meet you (at Moomia), but when we got there, the place wasn't hoppin'. I was ready to leave when you arrived - and I had to meet up with Surfer Girl who had just left to get her girlfriend and her husband.

We went to Double Seven (Oh, that place - now I get it) still cannot find info on the place). They were full to capacity and didn't let us in. So we walk down the street and guess who I bump into? My heart was pounding, I lost equilibrium, and didn't know what to do: it was no less than UK-Guy (Liz Jr. had gone on a couple of dates with him - so far).

Surfer Girl "jumps" all over him, introduces herself to his friend Cute-Guy, and off we go to Pastis. But there is a line stretching around the corner. I walk up to the front and get everyone in - because "I'm good like that." But I got into trouble  because Surfer Girl made a drunken scene at the door. Chris, the bouncer came over to me. "Girl, you can't do this." So I looked like the asshole.

No matter. Surfer Girl asks UK-Guy for his Black Amex and gets the tab started. We had a great time. Some dirty old man hit on me, and UK-Guy rescued me, taking my hand, and going for a little public display of affection. I'm not one to kiss on the street, much less in a bar, and much less at Pastis.

We got kicked out of Pastis (I'm assuming it was closing time), then went to Cielo, had a little dance-off, more kissing, and got kicked out of there too (closing time too). Stranded on the sidewalk, someone handed us dinky fliers for an after-hours club. A ghetto stretch limo pulls up, and we in we hop - off to another club. Don't even ask me what time it was, it's a blur.

We arrived to a smelly, dark, $30-cover charge of a place. They served no liquor, what? Next time, I'll carry a flask or a bottle of Veuve in my new, bright orange purse.

We grab a couple of Red Bulls and bottled water and watch the people: gays, lesbians, young and old, ghetto peeps, yoyo's, Chicanos, Jerseys - name 'em and they were there, dancing to most ridiculous music. I guess it made sense to them, probably they were all on drugs.

I checked my watch. It was 6:30 a.m. I had a meeting that same day. UK-Guy walked me to a cab and sent me home.

Surfer Girl and her friend stayed. I found out later that they left the club at 11 a.m.

So: Close, but not identical accounts. I believe everyone survived to live another day. Another day in the city.

For a quality memoir, stop muck-raking about and read this one: Ann Marlowe's just released The Book of Trouble: A Romance.