Sunday, May 11, 2008
I once published a novel that totally flopped. Now, 18 years later and sober, I've given it a haircut, scrubbed its face, and decided to reissue it.
Aug 29, 2003 | I've been getting letters lately from Salon readers, asking that I stop writing so often about friends with cancer, death, funerals, or the woman with just one arm; that I stick instead to Bush-bashing, and stories of tribal uplift. Now, I'm always glad to attack Bush, and his para-fascist regime, "para-fascist" being a term my father coined to describe Ronald Reagan's term as governor of California. I am upset about the Bush much of the time. I go to bed hoping that the front page of the Times will have headlines saying that terrible things are happening to him politically, so that I can go ahead and enjoy my morning coffee. But the bad news is that I am not going to bash Bush today. The good news is that there is no cancer in this story, nor is there one single person with only one arm. There is, unfortunately, no way to tell this story without including one tiny little funeral.
So: In 1985, the year before I got clean and sober, I published my third novel, "Joe Jones," which went on to do worse than any other book in history. I am not tooting my own horn -- I got such bad reviews that people pretended the book hadn't really even been published. I thought this book would end my career. Some reviewers even said they hoped I would get Ebola and bleed out and die -- or at any rate, that's what they said if you read between the lines. But the only paper that mattered was the San Francisco Chronicle: It was the paper my family and friends read. Bad reviews didn't matter as much in other papers, as long as the Chronicle ran a good review.
I had called the book review editor there during the week of publication, hoping she'd liked the book. She hadn't. At all. She was kind, though, not one of the reviewers who hoped I would die of Ebola -- perhaps just a bout of gingivitis, or gout. But there was going to be a bad review that Sunday.
I was humiliated, and vaguely suicidal. Luckily, I was still drinking at the time. I spent several days holed up on my houseboat, talking on the phone, leaving only to get supplies, and for walks along the bay. I didn't see anyone, except for people who lived on my dock. For years, I'd been friendly with a tall, elderly Austrian named Fred who lived at the far end of the dock, who walked by my houseboat several times a day, always accompanied by his little Scottie, Otto. Each time he passed, he said enthusiastically, "Hello! Good to see you! Have a nice day. Come along, Otto." For years, this is all he had ever said to me -- "Hello! Good to see you! Have a nice day. Come along, Otto."
But on the morning my review appeared, when I staggered out to get the paper, savagely hung over, I looked up and found Fred and Otto walking toward my houseboat. Fred stared grimly down at the dock as he passed. He muttered, "Saw your picture in the paper today," and hurried on.
The Chronicle had assigned it to a writer no one had ever heard of, which I mean nicely, in no way implying that they assigned it to a mentally unbalanced nobody. Still, some of you may be thinking, For God's sake, it's a book you're talking about, not a kid. And you are right. And you are wrong.
I cried a little, and had one or two cool, refreshing beers for breakfast, and then I headed off to the church I'd been attending for a few months at that point, in Marin City, by the flea market.
The people were used to me there, and very kind to me. They knew not to talk to me too much, and not to touch me, except during the Passing of the Peace, and not to crowd me, or try to get me to sign on to the nice little Jesusy situation they had going on. They mostly offered me sanctuary from the storm raging within. There was one old black guy named Theo, though, who always asked me how I was, and then threw his arms around me. He was one of the two men who burbled amens throughout the service -- him and old Deacon Hensley -- oh yeah, uh-huh, amen. He always blessed me, many times over, the way children splash water on you at the beach, blessyoublessyoublessyou; one word. He was very wise: One day he said something that I later quoted in a book, when I kept mentioning having lost my favorite sweater. The third time I mentioned it, he looked at me, somewhat askance, and said, "Honey? Sugar? It is gone."
This is a lesson that continues to defeat me on a regular basis.
Anyway, I sat in church the day of my bad review with my head bowed in shame, and people touched my shoulders gently during the Passing of the Peace. And then Theo came over and more or less forced me to receive a hug. "I saw your picture in the paper!" he said. "We're so proud of you! And we thank our dear Lord for bringing you here to us."
Within a day or two, Fred was calling out again to me as he passed, "Good to see you! Have a nice day! Come along, Otto," and since most people were pretending I hadn't actually even published the book, there was a sort of compassionate amnesia. Time passed: I had great friends, and so somehow I survived.
A year later, I finally got sober. My mind and life began to heal slowly. One day I reread "Joe Jones" and could see that it was not very good. I liked the funny, broken people in it, and how a rundown riverfront cafe served as a sort of church for them, and the sadness, and the lostness, because more than ever those seem such truths of our lives, in this overwhelming mess we find ourselves in together. Still, I knew that the reviewers had been right. I put it away, and over time, everyone forgot about it. It was gone.
After three years sober, when I wrote "All New People," my career got back on track, and hardly anyone ever mentioned "Joe Jones" again.
Time passed, and I wrote more books, and had a kid. Many people at my church died along the way, and with some of these losses, we weren't sure we could go on, but by sticking together, with faith and lots of food, we did. But then our beloved Theo died at 90, and the jig was suddenly up.
Here comes that funeral story I warned you about: We often have open caskets at our church, so we can see the person we love one last time. It is both unnerving, and mind-blowing, like being present for a birth. Theo was laid out in a dark wood casket, dressed in his finest black suit, lying on frilly bed liners. He looked like an oddly colored blackish clay figure, with thick yellow ivory fingernails. We began to lay him to rest. At our funerals, we rise, we sing, we sit, we rise, we weep. Our pastor Veronica glowed as if she were in her kitchen, even as she cried; her hair was braided in tiny extensions, like excitement of thought. In the beginning, everything was smooth and shy and glided right along, like the casket on its wheels, manned by the unctuous butlers from the mortuary.
People evoked the Theo they had known -- family, friends, old, young, white, black, Asian. Family members read Scripture, and reminisced. Theo's grandchildren looked clobbered by it all. The great grandchildren wiggled, solemnly. Black skin captures the light, highly polished, gleaming. It glows, like smooth bark, manzanita or madrone, and there are so many textures in the hair, and voices. How did we white European types get to be the standardized beauty ideal? It's laughable.
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