Literary Connections

Or Lack Thereof

Photo by Syd Wachs on Unsplash

~

I want to start a new novel but I don’t know where to begin. Over the past year I reached, for the very first time, if not the lack of knowing what to write about (crazy for me), then at least low on the speedometer as far as how fast I can produce ideas, content, characters, etc. Of course my Main Thing has usually—almost always—been heavily autobiographical. Maybe I don’t have anything in me truly bigger than that or genuinely beyond that. Or maybe I do and I just haven’t found it yet. I’m hoping over the next 2-3 years as I release more books and build up my stack more and more, that I’ll start to gain a bigger and bigger following. As I said before about Substack and books, and as most serious writers understand: It’s all about The Long Game. The long, slow, realistic, upward arc of the career.

Unless, of course, you’re that lucky cunt Norman Mailer. What a fucker. I finished The Armies of the Night. Brilliant yet also navel-gazing, anecdotal, very boring for long stretches, self-absorbed, overly poetic (which I both respected and disliked at once), and filled to the brim with gorgeous, profound little angelic notions. The March on Washington DC, October 21, 1967. Mailer broke through the gates and got arrested and spent a few days in jail. Fascinating look at the inner workings of the bureaucracy; Kafka’s The Castle territory.

But. Mailer. I realize more and more—every time I read another biography—how much connections matter, something I’ve always been in short supply of (but not devoid of entirely). It reminds me of that arrogant asshole writer I met at that NY Public Library (NYPL) author reading—I forget who the main author was now—back in 2017. (I picture now the two growling statue lions in front of the magnificent, epic building along 5^th Avenue.) My ex and I were together still back then. We lived in the El Cerrito house across the bay from San Francisco. I went to Manhattan for two weeks. I rented a little studio via Air BnB on East 74^th Street. I spent most of the time alone, wandering into bookstores, going to literary readings, exploring Central Park, and writing, working on what would become my first autobiographical novel in what I still hope to be a literary trilogy around my hardcore wild hitchhiking days, circa 2006 to 2010.

Over the years, since 2012, I’d gotten a BA in creative writing from SF State. I’d joined a professional writing workshop led by a famous ex-Beat poet in his late 70s in North Oakland. I’d had perhaps 20 short stories published in little lit mags and journals; some even paying me a pittance. I’d written about a dozen books but none were published, including my YA punk-literary novel, which later became The Crew, which is now published. Between 2012 and 2018 I tirelessly attended writers’ conferences around the country, even teaching at a few. And, an agent I interned for in 2013—for almost a year—offered to represent me after reading drafts of a couple novels…and I turned her down because I wanted “a big NYC agent.” The agent was not happy about this. I do not blame her.

Anyway, this guy I met at the reading was maybe 5-7 years younger than me, but wildly more successful. The guy—taller than me, stringy-thin, medium-length dark brown silky hair falling half over his eyes—sat next to me and before I knew it we were engaged in a conversation about contemporary literature.

He was American, but had been living in Paris and London for the past decade. I think he was late twenties. (I was about 34.) He wore tight, crisp, trendy, pre-ripped blue jeans and fancy hipster boots. A  black, pearl-buttoned collared shirt completed the look. Me? I had my usual sartorial buffoonery going on: My red puffy REI jacket, too-tight, faded jeans, and my Keen hiking boots. Always an odd combination: Small-town, Mountain Man Mohr meets Sophisticated NYC. A dialectic. A clash of values. An intriguing dichotomy. But, like a wannabe Norman Mailer, I’d always been psychically split into egregious fragments: Part madman, part mountain man, part pretentious pseudo-hipster, part angry contrarian, part sophisticated intellectual. An insider-outsider who never fit in anywhere. Too cool for the nerds, not cool enough for the cool kids. Such was my lot. (Still is.)

Anyway, turned out this guy had a book out, a novel about a school shooter. It had exploded on the literary scene a couple years prior, he said. He’d been reviewed by The New York Times, Washington Post, New York Review of Books, the Spectator, Paris Review, you name it. He got a big advance. Royalties rained down on him. As the seats filled up around and in front and behind us, I googled him. He’d been telling the truth; there were articles on him everywhere, from all the major magazines and papers. One called him “the new Roth.”

Fuck me.

*

After the reading Peter and I—fake name—got dinner nearby. Some steak and potato place. I regaled him with my sob-stories about having few literary connections, being published only in small, no-name mags and journals, and struggling to get a literary agent for any one of half a dozen novels I’d written which I felt were “solid.”

Though he was pretentious and arrogant, I appreciated his honesty, even if it hurt.

“Look, man,” he said, eyeing me across the table with his serious brown eyes, a sheaf of nearly black hair tumbling across his forehead. “Here’s the sad truth. Me? I went to NYU. I got all the connections I could handle. That’s how it works in America: You pay for those connections. From there I got plugged into the literary world in Paris, and in London. Teachers vouched for me; one connected me to their literary agent. Another had a few friends high up in major publishing. I got in, ya know. I was like a writing worm that sludged its way into the nasty rotten core of the apple, the corridors of publishing power.”

He paused, sawing off a piece of steak, then jamming it into his mouth and chewing loudly. He spoke while chewing. “I was nurtured, helped along, treated with literary kid gloves. They saw my raw talent. I had the right people in my corner, from NYU. My professors there knew the inside of the publishing landscape. Some of those profs wrote for The New Yorker.”

He swallowed the steak piece down his throat, a loud gulp. Pointing his knife at me, a tiny piece of steak dangling off, he said, “And you?” He shrugged. “Sorry, man. No bueno, my friend. Grew up in a small no-nothing town. Went to a state school on the west coast, of all places. Didn’t in essence pony up the dough, and I mean that both literally and figuratively. I paid my dues; you, my friend, did not.”

He sighed, wiping hair off his face again and setting down his fork and knife. He’d had half his steak. Steam roiled off his sliced-open, disemboweled baked potato, butter globulating down one side of it.

He shrugged again. “That’s just the way it is. You’re never going to make it, man, because you didn’t do what I did. So my novels get out there and yours don’t. As they say in the military: Tough shit, kid.”

He was right.

*

Back to Norman Fucking Mailer. He got it easy, like Peter. It was 80% timing, ambition, ego, and 20% talent. (His first book, I mean, The Naked and the Dead, 1948.) Mailer went to Harvard, for engineering, but hated it and took half a dozen writing classes. He excelled in these and decided to pursue the craft. He submitted to a Story Magazine contest and won. He became an editor and had several pieces published in both college papers, The Harvard Advocate and The Harvard Crimson. He was gaining a reputation. Some of his writing professors grasped his clear raw talent and sent his pieces to literary agents, publishers, etc. Some of these publishing professionals developed interest in the young man’s writing.

He started writing more stories, a novella, and finally a novel, No Percentage. He knew he needed more serious life experience. He was at bottom a middle-class Jew; he’d been coddled and protected all his life. He was going to Harvard. His opportunity for experience came in the form of World War II. At first he resisted because he was gaining momentum with his writing, connections and literary reputation. But then he realized the war would be perfect for what he needed. He signed up for the draft and served two years from 1944 to 1946, mostly in the Philippines. He wrote letters home to his first wife, Beatrice Silverman, describing in detail his experiences. He saw a little combat but not much.

This led him after the war to writing his great American war novel, The Naked and the Dead. He reestablished his Harvard and publishing connections and his book was published. People were looking for the first serious World War II novel. Mailer’s timing was impeccable. The book became a #1 NYT bestseller for 19 weeks. He sold 200,000 copies. It opened all the doors necessary for him to thrive as an author. This was his Big Beginning. Everything which came out of his career essentially started here. Hollywood wanted to make a film of the book. Broadway wanted to make a play. He met up and coming writers, and famous ones, etc. He’d found his way. He was 25 years old.

Me? I’ve always been small-town seeking Big City but a contrarian and anti-everything. I’ve always balked at authority, questioned societal conventions, laughed at social norms, and done things my own unique (and often hard) way. The easy, well-trod path was never my thing. Ask my mom.

And so, I did everything opposite my parents: Worked instead of going to college; traveled freely; chased women around endlessly; wrote as often as I could; hitchhiked across the country; gained serious life experience; etc. But I didn’t pull strings for potential connections. I wanted to do things my way, and on my own. But, as I’ve learned now the hard way: You need help in the book world. You can’t do it alone. Some people tried to help me over the years, and I often ignored them, lambasted them, or scorned them. Or else I was too eager, trying too hard, coming off as using someone for their own hard-won connections, achievements or success.

Such is my nature, twisted around my own drive and ego and belief in myself. Perhaps, though, because I’ve always inherently been an outsider, my work was never “up to snuff” for the pretentious, ideology-ridden, Feminist book world of the past decade. (Or maybe my writing just wasn’t good enough.) Perhaps it was all for the best in the end. Now, I’ve published my first book, The Crew, myself. And I feel happy about that. I write on Substack, freely and openly. I have some writer friends, and I attend readings here and there, and I lived in Manhattan for a few years, even. And I did meet authors published with major houses when I lived in New York, as well as connected writers.

But, in the end: Fuck it. I’ve always been just me, done things on my own terms, flipped everyone the bird. I don’t want to bow the knee to the powerful kings of publishing, or to agents who will try to make my novel softer, less masculine, less “white,” more progressive politically. Maybe if I’d come of age as a writer in the 1990s, or even the early 00s it would have been different. But I didn’t start submitting work until early in sobriety, circa 2011.

I’d rather lose those connections and retain my artistic integrity. So here I am, 2024, age 41, doing it my way, and I feel fine, baby.

I wonder where Peter is now, and how he’s done through the past seven years with his writing.

One thing I know for sure: I’m free.