No, you didn’t miss the game last night, and yes, I got it wrong. Yuri Foreman was terrific, btw. Not as skilled as Cotto, but any fighter who wills their way through a bum leg–even in a losing effort–gets HBO on their side. We’ll see him again.
On a darker note, I’m not sure how 50+ head shots affects one’s rabbinical studies.
Tonight I’ll be flipping between Jewish boxer/Rabbi-in-training Yuri Foreman and Game 2 of Celts vs. L.A. I can’t imagine a better Saturday night. Go ahead and insert your mid-30’s joke here, except I’ve always been this way. In college I loved doing laundry on Friday nights. Wash, dry, fold…ah, bliss.
Micah,
Congratulations on winning the PEN/Saul Bellow Award. I am duly, duly impressed. Please give me your predictions on Lakers vs. Celtics. You live in Boston, right?
Kindly,
Dan Wiktor
I’ll take the congrats but not for that award. The PEN/Saul Bellow is not the Saul Bellow Prize for Fiction. The Saul Bellow Prize for Fiction is given by Mr. Bellow’s long-time editor Al Silverman, who’s been involved with the BU MFA program for years. The PEN is awarded by those folks at PEN, whoever they are (I imagine a clutch of serious white men, eyes squinted, forever sighing with disappointment).
But thank you anyway, Mr. Wiktor. We take it wherever we can get it, yes? Perhaps I should have announced I’ve won the Noble Piece Prize for Literature. Rim shot? Eh.
As for L.A. vs. Boston, I have no idea. Boston can look unbeatable when it seems to interest them. Game 1 they looked disinterested, which I don’t understand. But this group thrives on the backs-against-the-wall thing, so maybe it’s all a strange plan to lull the Lakers into complacency…or maybe the Lakers just outplayed them.
Oh, we do still live in Boston. Sort of. Outside of Boston, to be precise. The lovely town of Holliston. Only fifteen minutes from a good restaurant.
I threw. Scout ran. I threw again. Scout ran some more.
And now he waits.
Evidently when one uses “cyclobenzaprine” in a post, worry ensues. Fear not–my back is almost all better. I resume boxing next week.
This link to a Boston Globe article about my good friend Steve Trefonides is long overdue. He’s an incredible artist, person, and mentor. In the few years I’ve known him, I learned that self-doubt is universal–among artists especially, though maybe we just whinge louder–and the most talented seldom realize they are.
In 1961 The New Yorker tossed off a snarky mini-review of Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road. Does it dissuade? Actually, it made me want to go back and read RR again. Criticism does that sometimes. Like a man in a suit imploring you not to look behind that door.
To bed. Tomorrow brings mystery.
Cyclobenzaprine is one hell of a drug. I now understand why they called it Mellow Yellow. But it’s gotten the back spasms under control. On that note (really?) I have some long-overdue pics taken by my (un)official photographer, Vincenzo Colecchia.
Short story shorter: Met Enzo while on book tour in Como. He runs a small bookstore there, a single room tucked among the sloping alleys of that old Roman village. We became fast friends, he and his lovely girlfriend visited us April ‘09, and we plied them with maple syrup, french toast, tapioca, and other random American goodies.
He also took this pic of our living room, complete with resident superdog:
The local diner was of particular fascination to our Italian friends. They’d seen American diners in movies. Never in person.
My eyes are closing. “Doped” would be an appropriate word. As would “fairly mulled” to coin an old Sinatra phrase.
The pre-order is here for LOSING GRACELAND. Barnes & Noble has the best price point, but the others work fine as well. Along with your local bookstore, let’s not forget, and they probably need the business.
Or Amazon.
Or Barnes & Noble.
Nine consecutive days of chin-ups turned my back into a spasmed mess. I’m lying in bed, legs crossed, listening to the whine of circular saws across the street.
Been meaning to post this early Danny Elfman clip:
It’s atonal, bizarre, and…somehow ahead of its time. I think.
Question: How long until they resurrect The Gong Show? Was it not the proto-version of “reality TV”? (which is a label that must die, just as friend Brian Jenkins insists “epic fail” must be tossed in the word-bin).
The NYT ran a piece on one of my favorite directors Bong Joon-ho. Genre-blending at its finest.
Copy-edits are usually a chore, but the Random House copy editor is so damn good that I’m actually…well, entertained.
I’ve won the Saul Bellow Prize for fiction. Super-agent Jud and I celebrated by trading stories about Rick James until 4:30 a.m. I’m trying to convince Takashi Murakami’s NYC gallery to host the book launch. How cool would that be? Forget the book–seeing superflat up close is incredible.
This time of the year always finds me antsy; an hour hitting the heavy bag in the garage does little to calm my nerves. I’m between projects, and two options arise:
1. Begin something new.
2. Flee to Isla Mujeres.
Happiness may be found somewhere between those two.
You do not stand still. A man of genius should be like a young boy who is never, never and never will be a grown up. He must have a new style and new methods. Not for fashion’s sake, but because he has outgrown the old ways.
Wise words from Oscar Wilde’s dad.
It is hot today. My writing shed still holds the evening cool, but I feel heat encroaching. Right now, as I type, a cluster of hornets bangs against my window screen. Scout lies in the dirt, kong by his head, eyes narrowed.
So the year is almost finished, and the MFA program concludes, and I have a pile of stories in the middle of my floor. No idea what to do with them. Edit, maybe. Then send somewhere. Or just post them on this site. Other tasks beckon louder–copy edits for LOSING GRACELAND (galleys in June), movement on the graphic novel, and a two-week writing frenzy on the screenplay adaptation of THE MENSCH. There’s also the matter of novel #4. Seventy pages in it’s not terrible, and that’s all the incentive I need to stick with it. For now. A fickle bastard, I am.
Speaking of bastards, remember good old JACK? Well, I do. And he’s not gone. Just shelved, temporarily. I received an interesting email from–oh, hell. I’ll just put it up.
Mr. Nathan,
I finally got around to watching KILL BILL and it reminded me a little of the book you keep talking about. “Jack The Bastard.” Was this on your mind when you were writing it?
I too am from Buffalo. Thought you’d like to know that.
-C. Wiktor
Picasso said good artists borrow, great artists steal. Years ago–before KILL BILL–I watched a nice little Japanese flick called LADY SNOWBLOOD and thought to myself: “Self, this would make a good plot line.” I’d always wanted to write something set along the Tex-Mex border (a female classmate recently asked what the Tex-Mex border was; doesn’t everyone know the Tex-Mex border? It’s lawless, liminal, and one other L word…maybe licentious?). So I added one part female revenge tale to one part Tex-Mex spaghetti western, and you get the genesis of JTB.
For a graphic novel it’s an easier sale. For a novel, not so much. Hence the delay. And I knew a C. Wiktor in Buffalo, but I doubt it’s the same guy. If it is, what’s with the “Mr”?
I’m sitting in the Brookline library, laptop fan whirring, children whispering in the adjacent cubicle. I should be finishing a chapter, but an update seems more important. And easier.
So a few items. Cover art is almost finished, interior layout looks good–very good–and we’re working on a west coast sponsor for my Seattle/Malibu/Los Angeles tour leg. Touring is never as productive as one hopes, but it still serves a function. What is that function? I don’t know. Maybe it’s only purpose is to make the writer feel connected, and if that’s the case, how can I complain?
I’m translating an Isaac Singer story this summer, from the original Yiddish. Why? Because it will be incredibly difficult. And I’m stubborn. And I have to fulfill a foreign language requirement for my MFA. I cling to the belief that incredibly difficult things often lead somewhere important. That mantra is what gets me through the next book. I don’t care if it’s true–I just have to believe it.
Back to work. A podcast may happen this summer. Details to come, if at all.
Have you read The Moon and Sixpence? No? What are you waiting for?
Somerset explodes the 1st-person-pov-is-too-limited argument. He does more than explode it; he sets it on fire, dances around the inferno, and rolls around in the ashes. Or something like that.
Saudade. My new favorite word. Better than nostalgia. Perhaps the most accurate portrayal of childhood ever compressed into a single term. Saudade. Notice the soft close of your palate at the end. When a word just happens to be physically metaphorical…alchemy is at work.
I mentioned it before, and I must do so again. Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli is the finest graphic novel I’ve ever read. Period. I have a bit of bias, having written a short piece about an architect not too long ago and then having stumbled upon Mazzucchelli’s work, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve been waiting years–decades?–for illustrations to become more than just a visual representation of action.
So my existential crisis continues. I’m a fan of the old EC (my first was at age 8, when I asked mom how she knew I wasn’t in a coma imagining the entire world; she said something like “Do you know what my answer is going to be? No? Then you’re not imagining any of this”). But the EC continues, having moved from woe to absurdity. Tonight I dine on wild rice and scallops. I boxed for eight rounds this morning. Scout chased a ball thirty-seven times this afternoon. That cannot be good for him–I don’t care how tough GSPs are.
Before parting, here’s a b&w early draft of that graphic novel project. Looks like things are moving ahead faster than expected, which always means slower than one wants. But this is publishing after all.
Dan did a terrific job with the panels–you should see it in color. And with words. More to come.
