The Glass Character: Rich Correll

Showing posts with label Rich Correll. Show all posts

Monday, March 9, 2015

Embrace failure? Go ahead and try

Every once in a while, somebody asks me something about my most recent novel, The Glass Character. In its most blatant and perhaps rudest form, it goes something like this. "So. Just how many dollars do you make per copy sold, and how much does that add up to over, say, a year? How much do you earn per annum?"

Maybe the person is thinking about writing a book. Perhaps they will sell millions of copies and become immensely rich. In every case, I have "earned" in the minuses, so I am not sure what to say to these people to avoid utterly humiliating myself.

How can you possibly earn in the minuses? I'm still trying to figure that out. It must be a whole new definition of failure, which is something that we are (of course!) supposed to wholeheartedly embrace.

And if I share this lovely fact with some other writer, what I generally get is some version of, "Oh. That's never happened to me."
As I write this, I can feel an avalanche of advice coming on from writers who, unlike me, know how to do this. I once asked one simple question,I think about how you get your books into Chapters/Indigo stores, and got THOUSANDS of words of "advice" on every conceivable aspect of writing and publishing.

I thought - and in this situation, anything I think is apparently wrong - isn't this just a little bit of overkill? Why is this person treating a third-time novelist like a complete novice, and expecting nothing but gratitude? Here's what you "should" be doing, and here's what you "should" be doing, etc. etc. etc. (because you're obviously doing it wrong). I realize now that this was an extreme example of gratuitous advice, but what irks me about this kind of situation is the utter lack of understanding that this could be anything but a great and even selfless generosity.

When am I going to smarten up, and either "win" at this godawful game or go home? Right now I would rather have my fingernails pulled out than try to publish again. It's the godawful isolation, the loneliness and the sense of being ineffectual, while everyone else skips around with royalty cheques in hand. By the way, what does a "minus" cheque look like anyway? Is it sort of like a black hole in space?

I am sick of being chipper about the book. It has now been out for a year (and this is kind of like unwrapping the bandages from my wrists, if you know what I mean) and have had no reviews, NONE, except for one sort-of review in a online magazine from Winnipeg that doesn't strike me as very literary. It was written by a 30-year-old standup comedian who, by his own admission (in a published article in the Globe and Mail, no less) admits he's unambitious, unemployed, a general layabout, and feels the world owes him a living. He also said he was only writing the piece for the cheque.

But what's even more interesting is the fact that he made exactly the same amount as me - only my total is in the minuses! As with my other two novels, I bombed so badly, sold so few copies that I ended up in the hole. Am I okay with this? You tell me.

I don't know what happened, because my first two novels got nearly universally glowing reviews, even in publications in the U. S. which had never been sent a copy. The Calgary and Edmonton papers interviewed me, I got a full-page spread in the Montreal Gazette (complete with full-color author photo!), and the Vancouver Sun said I should be a contender for the Leacock Award. Both my hometown papers interviewed me at length and put out big spreads. The second book was favorably compared in the Globe and Mail to the work of Nobel-winner Alice Munro and Oprah pick Anne-Marie MacDonald.

My first publisher, whom I very much enjoyed working with, phoned me breathlessly to say, "Margaret, it's a miracle. We've never had so many reviews for a novel, even in places we didn't send copies to, and they're all positive. We can't believe it!" A miracle being a supernatural event not caused by human beings. Then she went on to say that my sales were worse than any book they had ever published before.

What happened? You tell me. Maybe I'm just too old and don't know what I am doing. An act of love has become an act of poorly-executed, even disastrous commerce.

I don't know how to invite myself to writers' events and seem to be getting no help from anyone. It seems as if you have to know some sort of bizarre secret handshake, like a Freemason. This did not happen before. They asked me. But because it got no reviews, my book does not seem to exist. It does not exist because it got no reviews. And so on. Begging is undignified and destroys my morale. Not having my emails answered is worse, giving me the impression that I don't exist, or, at least, I don't exist in their minds (or they would rather I didn't exist).

I've sent out multiple copies of the novel to people whom I thought might be interested. I might as well have dropped them into the fucking Grand Canyon. The waste of money, the hundreds of wasted dollars isn't the half of it: it's the waste of hope, the wasted years of creative effort, out the window. If a story doesn't get told, it ain't a story. Isn't that true?

But it's your fault, Margaret. Don't you ever forget that you bungled it in some mysterious way that everyone else is able to avoid. And you're not supposed to "learn" this, but just know.

I no longer care about what will happen because no one will see this anyway. They never do. I am tired of the whole goddamn Facebook popularity contest and how many "likes" I get, all the simpering profile pictures with hair gently streaming in the artificial wind, and the phony modesty, feeling so "humbled" by winning a major award, followed by the usual "oohs" and "ahhhs" of the sycophantic Greek chorus who secretly want to kill them with envy. Fuck it.

One day well over a year ago I got a phone call from Rich Correll in L. A. saying he was very interested in the book. This was more than a year after I sent some excerpts to an address I wasn't sure was valid. Rich Correll was like a second son to Harold Lloyd, almost one of the family, and was his filmographer and is in every documentary about him.

When we talked, he told me he thought a feature film about Harold's life was long overdue. My God, this was what I had been thinking about from the start, and now a major Hollywood director agreed with me! Could it be he was seeing potential in my work? An adaptation? A SOMETHING?

I wasn't just excited, I was walking on the ceiling! How could this BE? How could Rich Correll be interested in my work? It was like getting a phone call from Jesus. Well, it can't be, folks, because he stopped answering my emails some time ago, and like an idiot I don't know why. In fact, to this day I don't even know if he got his complimentary copy because I haven't heard from him. Like an even worse idiot, I phoned him and left a message last week. He didn't call me back. It was last-ditch and I feel vaguely ashamed that I did it, but Jesus, Rich Correll! I wrote a whole post on him and about how I felt he might be the key to blowing this novel out of the backwater it's stuck in. I just never get the message, do I? Do I? My stubbornness, my refusal to give up is pathological, even poisonous. Certainly it is not a sign of health, as it nets me exactly nothing.

Losing interest is just fine. I am not referring to losing interest. I am referring to having a blank intractible silence open up where the interest used to be, so that I automatically fill it in with what might be the truth, in a hundred different poisonous ways.

I need information to get me out of this. "Your book sucks, it's offensive, it's inaccurate, I hate how you portrayed Harold, (or, worst of all) it bored the piss out of me and I hate you for writing it" would be better than this. One three-word email: "I've lost interest." ANYTHING would be better than this. For, like my book, now I don't exist either, or I am not deemed worthy of a reply.

I can't deal with it. Help me here. But no. I know it already, I know what no answer means.

Now I will tell you something really stupid, or at least now I know it's stupid. I used to worry this book might bother someone in the Lloyd family, who were badly burned by an insensitive and poorly-written thing Richard Schickel wrote to fulfill a contractual obligation. So I let them know I was writing a novel about him (though I never quite got past the front desk). I didn't do it to avoid a lawsuit, which wouldn't happen anyway. I didn't do it to avoid "stepping on anyone's toes". I didn't do it so I "wouldn't get in trouble". I did it because I love Harold Lloyd and I care what his family thinks about any book written about him.

But as with everything else, I'm not on the radar. Oh. Did somebody say something? Sorry, no, I must be mistaken.

Why is it I am ALWAYS dumped on my head? What is it I'm doing so wrong? Is the book really weak, or even a piece of shit? Once in a while I think, well, what else could it be? But I surely didn't think that at the time. God, at the time it was nothing short of a rebirth. I didn't think I'd ever write again, and I was so disabled it was unlikely I'd even want to try.

But that is a whole 'nother story, and if you think THIS one is hard to tell, that one is plain impossible.

Oh, I realize I shouldn't even be writing this, as it's taboo to say what you really think, but I am at the point that the loneliness and isolation are killing me and I wonder if I care any more who (if anyone) sees this. I wanted this so badly for so long. I am being punished by the gods, it seems. And if you think this is bad, you should see the paragraphs I just deleted.

I read a piece in the Globe and Mail by Russell Smith who said writers should not blame themselves for a huge shift in the global economy. Maybe. But some authors, as others point out ceaselessly, are doing just fine, which is I guess supposed to make me feel better.

I just get tired, is all, of being entertaining, which nets me exactly twelve readers anyway, sometimes. Or not. What a futile enterprise this all is! And it has gone on for seven years, from the first moment the idea hit me like a brick on the head. Harold Lloyd - I would write about Harold Lloyd!

I will not do this to myself ever again, no matter how badly I want to, as it's obviously too late for Harold after less than a year. My tiny window of opportunity has already slammed shut, and guess who is responsible.

I loved him, I did this for love, I still love him, and the silence (no doubt mysteriously caused by me) is bloody deafening. And by the way, I am NOT saying, "Oh, I wrote such a crappy book that everyone is ignoring it". I still think it's the best thing I have written or am likely to write, and it far surpasses the first two in complexity of story line and characters. Though I also realize that there may be no one else on earth who thinks so.

We're supposed to embrace failure. Right. I have embraced it three times, and all it has done is publicly humiliate me and kick me in the head. What is worse, I don't dare speak of it to anyone, when all I really need is a human being who will listen to me. No advice, no corrections, no "gee, that never happened to me". All I know how to do is be a writer, but no one told me there was an imperative to be a "successful" writer (i. e. move copies). Publishing is a business, it's there to produce and sell books, and not only is there nothing wrong with that, I think it's absolutely great. Authors couldn't exist without it. But it is becoming increasingly obvious that for me, it was not meant to be. About all I can do to deal with this feeling is try to walk away from it and do something else. Sometimes, it almost works.

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Harold, this isn't your fault

Every once in a while (not often, since I've been over this ground at least a million times) I find a new picture of Harold that I like. Here it's in two versions, though even the larger one has been cropped out of another one that had huge orange letters reading BRITISH PATHE at the bottom. Probably this means I'm not supposed to use it, but fuck them.

Why is it my enthusiasm is so flat today? I am sick of being chipper about the book. I have had no reviews, NONE, except for one sort-of review in a online magazine from Winnipeg that doesn't strike me as very literary. It was written by a 30-year-old standup comedian who, by his own admission (in a published article in the Globe and Mail, no less) admits he's unambitious, unemployed, a general layabout, and feels the world owes him a living. He also said he was only writing the piece for the $250 cheque.

My first publisher phoned me breathlessly to say, "Margaret, it's a miracle. We've never had so many reviews for a novel, even in places we didn't send copies to, and they're all positive. We can't believe it!" A miracle being a supernatural event not caused by human beings. Then she went on to say that my sales were worse than any book they had ever published before.

What happened? You tell me. Maybe I'm just too old and don't know what I am doing. An act of love has become an act of poorly-executed, even disastrous commerce.

I've sent out multiple copies of the novel to people whom I thought might be interested. I might as well have dropped them into the fucking Grand Canyon. The waste of money, the hundreds of wasted dollars isn't the half of it: it's the waste of hope, the wasted years of creative effort, out the window. If a story doesn't get told, it ain't a story. Isn't that true?

I wasn't just excited, I was walking on the ceiling! How could this BE? How could Rich Correll be interested in my work? Well, it can't be, folks, because he stopped answering my emails some time ago, and like an idiot I don't know why. In fact, to this day I don't even know if he got his complimentary copy because I haven't heard from him. Like an even worse idiot, I phoned him and left a message last week. He didn't call me back. It was last-ditch and I feel vaguely ashamed that I did it, but Jesus, Rich Correll! I wrote a whole post on him and about how I felt he might be the key to blowing this novel out of the backwater it's stuck in. I just never get the message, do I? Do I? My stubbornness, my refusal to give up is pathological, even poisonous. Certainly it is not a sign of health, as it nets me exactly nothing.

I can't deal with it. Help me here. But no. I know it already, I know what no answer means.

But as with everything else, I'm not on the radar. Oh. Did somebody say something? Sorry, no, I must be mistaken.

I will not do this to myself ever again, no matter how badly I want to, as it's obviously too late for Harold after just over half a year. My tiny window of opportunity has already slammed shut, and guess who is responsible.

We're supposed to embrace failure. Right. I have embraced it three times, and all it has done is kick me in the head. All I know how to do is be a writer, but no one told me there was an imperative to be a "successful" writer (i. e move copies). It is becoming increasingly obvious that it was not meant to be. About all I can do to deal with this feeling is try to walk away from it and do something else. Sometimes, it almost works.

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Searching for Rich Correll, take 2

(This post originally ran more than three years ago. Since then, a lot has happened - The Glass Character finally saw print! - and a lot didn't. It is of some benefit to realize there was a time, ONLY three years ago, when I didn't think I'd connect with RC at all. I have his phone number in LA now, which would've seemed like a miracle then. So something must have happened in the interim. But I have no idea if he has read my book, if he even received it. By the way, back in 2011, I could not find a single up-to-date photo of Rich Correll, so had to use these grainy shots from when he was a child actor. I kept them simply because I like them.)

I can remember a time when I wouldn't touch a computer, afraid it would give me one of those searing visible cracks I always get on car doors. (No one else seems to get these, kinda like people whose watches stop for no reason.)

Then I touched one, though I know not when. There was no internet then, just a Tandy computer I lovingly called Jessica, a daisy wheel printer, and a fax machine. I don't remember my first foray into the internet, or even what it was called then. The Information Highway, I think, and if you tried to use it, some techie guy would brand you a "newbie".

For a long time I was afraid of it and was sure I'd never use it and that it would be daunting and impossible to use and I would feel bloody stupid if I even tried. My kids were printing stuff out on long rolls that you tore off like chunks of toilet paper, with a sort of perforated border with holes in it on the sides. They printed out arcane secret information about the X Files and stuff like that. It was interesting, yes, but intimidating, something for the young.

I don't remember when I found out what a download was, probably last week sometime. I was thrown into the water and swam badly, still swim badly for the most part, but here I am with, drum roll please, not only a web site (which is mostly an ad for my novels) but a blog.

Then, the other day something very strange happened. One second I hated the idea of social networking, knew nothing about it and felt like it was all written in a foreign language, like Armenian or something, then the next second I was "on" Facebook.

I still don't really know how to use it, because there are no instructions. You're just supposed to know. Once more I have that queasy feeling I got to the party late, too late to ever catch up. But I didn't do it to "network". I did it to find one person.

This person, rare as an exotic deer or a species no one has ever seen before, is so elusive I can't find an updated image of him. These pictures are from his child star days, when he had an ongoing role on Leave it to Beaver. There would appear to be no reliable information for contacting him, just a few wretchedly inappropriate mailing addresses, though the Lord only knows I've tried.

The two-and-a-half people who follow this blog might know that I kvetch a lot about the fact that I've written a novel about Harold Lloyd, the silent film genius, and so far can't get anyone in Canada interested in publishing it. People all over the place are telling me to self-publish, and I don't see how that would work if you had to book your own tours, readings, etc., do all your own distribution and promotion, get it in all the stores and on the net, pay for your own ads, etc. etc. and not go bankrupt.

I thought when you published your book, you made money. Silly me. But there's a book crisis going on, and no one knows quite where they stand. This means everyone's suddenly an expert telling everyone else what they should do. But paper books are becoming obsolete, which means that the retail chains will eventually close (and let's not think about those small independent stores that have tried to survive a plague of almost Biblical proportions). Most if not all of the publishing industry will exist online. But when you're between systems, it's disorienting. Writers have to scramble, create their own books, or just endure the slammed doors that eventually lead to a bad case of clinical depression.

SOOOOOO, to get to the actual point of all this, I'm searching for Rich Correll, the Hollywood polymath who co-invented the character/global phenomenon Hannah Montana and who has been directing hit Disney programs (the kind Caitlin slavishly watches) for years. He has done, and is doing, tons of other stuff in the industry as well, but that's not the real reason I'm looking.

I want to find Rich Correll because he was like a second son to Harold Lloyd: he knew Harold Lloyd, he loved Harold Lloyd, and he just strikes me as someone who might actually be willing to help me realize this labour of the heart, or at least to understand why I did it, and why it means so agonizingly much to me.

Or not. Maybe it'll just be the usual best of luck with this I've heard every other time I've made a "contact", which as far as I am concerned means about as much as a Facebook "friend". Hard to say. Maybe he's too busy suing the Disney Corporation for $5 million (and imagine suing Mickey Mouse! This is both quixotic and admirable.) I don't know. I just feel at this point like I need to talk to someone who loves Harold Lloyd as much as I do.

It's funny to be in this position now. Everyone seems to be saying, "Accept less." Or even "give it up, it'll never happen". I know I can do this, I know I will do this, but I'm lost in a labyrinth. For this reason, to try to find Rich Correll whom I've been tracking like a bloodhound for months, I joined Facebook and found myself, once again, a stranger in a strange land.

As usual, as with everything I have ever done, I feel like a complete outsider. Some of my "friends" have over 1,000 names on their list, when I have more like nine or ten. It's high school all over again. I sort of blunder around and put up photos, not knowing what else to do. There's a place where you can say "what's on your mind", but judging from the comments, it looks like little snippets of whimsy, not requests for help or advice. Everyone is so cheerful, all day long, all the time. No one has a family crisis or an illness or a reversal of any kind. It's all good! Great things happen to the Facebook gang, non-stop, things so enviable you might be tempted to wonder if reality isn't being bent just a little, mainly so you'll feel a whole lot worse about your own life.

I guess I haven't learned Facebook etiquette, its invisible set of rules. When I post comments that are serious, especially about my work, I am usually made to feel like an opportunist who should just shut up and go away. Which I'm supposed to. And which I can't. Not this time.

Over the years I've seen Rich Correll all over the place. I am certain I saw him on Leave it to Beaver, but I was seven or eight years old then and didn't have much appreciation for these things. TV shows just popped out of the screen fully-formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus. But every time there was a documentary on movies it seems he'd show up, and since I did not ever see them in chronological order he would get older, then younger, then middle-aged in the strangest way.

He figured large in the brilliant Kevin Brownlow documentary The Third Genius, a rich dense Christmas pudding of a film just chock-a-block with archival interviews, people who knew Harold "when". This was one of those times he mysteriously got younger, and the reminiscences flowed so easily it was probably one of those things where you could just turn the camera on.

Rich Correll also appeared on the bonus disc in the superb Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection DVD set. At one point, after all the reminiscences, suddenly there was pure magic, more magic than Harold ever pulled off in his entire life as a master conjurer. He brought out a battered old suitcase full of treasures: Harold Lloyd's makeup kit, full of artifacts going back to the early 1900s. Old gloves (Harold needed a prosthetic glove because half his right hand had been blown off in an accident), tubes of greasepaint, a mirror with his name lettered on it. And pairs and pairs of horn-rimmed glasses. Harold Lloyd's glasses. Though Harold referred to his alter ego as the Glass Character, these were empty frames with no glass in them.

This is why I want to talk to Rich Correll. Harold Lloyd bequeathed this battered old case of magic to him. He has it in his possession. If Harold's spirit is anywhere, it's there, and Rich Correll holds it in his hands.

Order The Glass Character from:

Thistledown Press

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Glass-Character-Margaret-Gunning/dp/1927068886/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395534131&sr=1-1&keywords=the+glass+character

Chapters/Indigo.ca

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%2520glass%2520character%2520margaret%2520gunning&ikwsec=Home

Monday, March 10, 2014

Bursting Blings and Beta: the lost art of the basement tape

The past swims before my eyes. Or rather lurches and jostles, violently, in violet colors, with that grainy, almost sparkling lower frame which is the telltale sign of the 30-year-old Beta-format videotape. Something happens to these tapes when allowed to stew in their own nitrates in somebody's basement for two or three decades. A chemical change comes over them - an alchemy - and like a good friend going through a bad divorce, they come out Different. They go bad, actually, denature and denitrate (though they're probably not made of nitrate at all but some cheap acetate like a whore's stocking), but in some brilliant way they also spring into unique works of moving art. Thus Rich Correll, as he forever bounds on to the stage with his gigantic Citizen-Kane-sized name in lights, seems to strobe jubilantly as he saunters towards the towering structure that is the Squares, his appearance evanescent, almost incandescent as the Beta tape catches that fleeting second, that instant in time which is the Hollywood Squares Leave it to Beaver Day.

And here, a brilliantly-striped, strobing Rich sounds forth on something, the contents of which we will never know, but how beautifully he does it, in his violet/magenta/chartreuse/indigo tones interspersed with gaudy flashes of carmine. Beyond graininess or distortion, this thing has just gone all to hell with color, a striated peacock-tail of almost indecent hue, as if the colors were leaping and strobing right out of Rich Correlll's own creative head as he sits in that square behind his name. I wish there were some sort of magic crayon or acrylic or whatever that would paint in jostling, violently jiggling multicolored lines like that, for then I might be able to make something resembling art. The closest I've ever come is the Blingee, and to be honest the Blingee is not a very satisfying art form unless you sign up and pay for all those extras, like exploding flamingos and such.

But in a vain attempt to recapture the psychedelic, even hallucinogenic atmosphere of the aforementioned Hollywood Squares Beta clips, here are a couple of Blingees, I mean the kind you get if you don't sign up or pay, which look pretty low-res to me. The graceful fireworks I saw when I made this thing have sort of gone all to pot and turned into three-frames-per-second jerks. Oh well, chalk it up to low technology, which can, after all, have a beauty all its own.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Rich Correll Days

Hello, and welcome to Rich Correll Day(s). I say "days" because I might be phoning him soon and don' t know what will happen.

I've written about this before, that it took me forever to contact him. I just tried everywhere, the most outlandish things, and more than a year went by - maybe two.

Having written The Glass Character, which revolves around the life and career of Harold Lloyd, I so so so so SO wanted to connect with him, as someone who might understand what the hell I was trying to do.

Never mind that I had been seeing Rich Correll (though unwittingly) probably since I was six years old. He had a guest shot on Dobie Gillis, for God's sake, and Maynard G. Krebbs was my first crush ever.

Richard Correll isn't just a child star and Hollywood polymath with Disney and IMBD and everything else. He spent time with Harold, a lot of time, and even touched his films, moved them around. and put them in place. It must have been like touching pure magic.

Some people have been kissed by God; most haven't. At some point, Rich Correll was. This was special, like a seal of destiny or something. I don't have one of those and never will, but I went ahead and wrote the novel anyway. I find it's what I have to do.

This Max Headroom one is my favorite, a clip-ette from a 1970s appearance on Hollywood Squares with many other cast members from Leave it to Beaver. The surrealism appeals to me: the bouncing frame, the horizontal lines, the royal blue/magenta/aquamarine stripes flashing neon like something from a psychedelic cartoon.

I can't find the one YouTube episode of LITB that he's in, where he wore some sort of sweatshirt with a monster on it. Must have been taken down. It would have made some cool gifs.

This must have been a beautiful time. I remember owning a horse as a girl for a couple of years, then - incredibly - losing interest. But the two years was a blessed time, and I didn't know it then. It would have to do for the rest of my life.

When I had given up on Rich Correll, I mean completely given up and forgotten all about it, and finally gotten a deal with a publisher and signed a contract, I came home from babysitting one night and there was a message on my answering machine; "Hi Margaret, this is Rich Correll calling from Los Angeles."

Was that my Kissed by God moment, over so fast I could barely tell what it was? It was a good conversation, just what I hoped it would be, and then I sent him way, way, way too much stuff.

It only occurred to me later that I should've really waited until the book was actually out.

Then it occurred to me that, if he has time to read any of it at all, which he probably doesn't, he may not even like it.

This is NOT the cover of The Glass Character. I have no idea what the cover will look like, though they asked me for a few suggestions (no clock-dangling, please!). I needed something to hold on to or keep my eye on while I wait.

Next will be galleys, I hope. . . I don't know. I can't say any of this was easy.

I'm not sure when I'll call, except I will, I have to! I think I blew it with a couple of others just by showing too much enthusiasm. You're not allowed to want anything, I guess, even as others all around you seem to get everything they want.

I am beginning to believe in Fate. I am beginning to believe in Predestination. I am beginning to believe (once again) in Spiritualism, though it's not what people think, not as easily shaped to their expectations.

If all goes according to fate, nothing much will happen with this novel, and it will be agony. I know it sounds crazy, but I'm doing this for Harold. I want to help him come back (as he says in my messages from him) IN A BIG WAY.

As usual, it's all teetering on some sort of verge. It was ever thus, was it not? Say goodnight, Harold.

(CODA: I still have that message on my answering machine. It has been there for months. Bill said, "When are you going to erase that?" I said, "After I talk to him again." Will it be there forever?