Ducking for apples, or, the queen of the quotes

Yeah, I know, posting quotes from famous writers is pretty cheesy, and maybe I could think up a better idea if I weren't so preoccupied with finding an agent to represent my (third) novel. It has me dancing on a bed of needles, my nerves jumping at every turn.

So let's think about something else, shall we? Meaning, one Dorothy Parker, a writer known for her sardonic poetry and even more sardonic quips ("One more drink and I'll be under the host", "You can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think.")

Parker was brilliant, but she was also lightning-quick, fast on the verbal draw. She and her buds sat around a big round table at the Algonquin Hotel and drank their lunch every day. Quips flew like ping-pong balls, which is kind of surprising because these guys (all guys, except Dottie Parker) were so inebriated they could barely stand up. But then, this was the Jazz Age, and drinking was forbidden, a little naughty, and necessary fuel for the writing life.

Some of her best quotes seem to come out of the air, meaning they were likely part of a larger conversation. Such as the one about ducking for apples: "There but for a typographical error is the story of my life." And how did that sweet little debutante injure her leg? "Sliding down a barrister."

You don't get paid for these things ("a girl's best friend is her mutter"), so Dottie really had to scrape hard to make a living. She wrote grand short stories, as well as the kind of whimsical verse made popular by Ogden Nash - except that it went like this: "Three be the things I shall have till I die,/Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye." Book reviewing kept her afloat, and books were piled everywhere in her messy apartment, along with empty bottles, leftover cheese sandwiches, eviction notices, and assorted poodles.

Parker had a soul-friend named Robert Benchley, a humorist who was kind of like Bennett Cerf (God, why do I know about Bennett Cerf??). They never had sex, or at least I don't think they did, but they loved each other in a special way. I once considered writing a memoir of my crushes on men, titled Searching for Robert Benchley. (Don't anybody steal that, I might still use it.)

Poor Dottie. Though she lived to be over 70, she became increasingly bizarre and snappish with the years, so that her league of loyal friends thinned out. She could still get off a good one now and then ("This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."), but as the years passed, her life was loneliness, booze, TV game shows and messy old dogs.

What's the point of all this? Dorothy Parker is incredibly famous, but what exactly did she contribute? A few slight plays, even slighter verse, short stories that were memorable but not great. She was a personality, a package deal, and when you think about it, all writers need to be that way: a walking advertisement for their work, if not for themselves.

Writers are the delivery device for what they write. They must get out there and live it. Work it! And try not to get too drunk in the meantime.

Does it have to be that way? Does it?

Glumday glumday

I'd say this is how I looked this morning when I opened my eyes, but I couldn't open my eyes.

Oh it was a great weekend, yessirree, a nice weekend in which I ate nine pieces of bacon at a Mother's Day brunch.

Then came the day of reckoning, the day I had to suck it up and start approaching (with a whip and a chair) literary agents to "represent" (I hope) my unpublished novel to publishers.

I've gone through this before. Yessirree and Bob. It wasn't exactly my idea of a good time. Unfortunately, my agent and my publisher got so tight with each other that they forgot all about me. It was too sad. I felt burned, not listened to, and sadly sunk back into my cave with scales falling off me.

Fortunately, during this time I wrote three books (two novels and a book of poems). The third one, I think, is the charm.

I wrote this book with the lifting heart of a lover, or of gull's wings scudding the horizon. I almost ran to my computer every day to work on it. Jesus, I loved this book! And given the fact that I had two "well-received" (read: remaindered) novels to my credit, I thought it would be a breeze to sell this one.

That is, until I began the process of trying to get noticed, and slammed into the same brick wall I first encountered in about 1987.

This is not to complain about my lot as a writer. Jeezly, no! What could be better! What could be more fulfilling than pouring out your soul on a piece of paper! To expect people to actually read it, then to expect to be paid for it is the height of arrogance, is it not? Yes, except for J. K. Rowling and Stephen King. We like it that they're famous and rich.

This is just the Mondays, the moondog-days that always follow after nine pieces of bacon. No doubt that many nitrates poison the brain. Are dreams punished in proportion to their majesty? Could be. Why do I keep on doing this? Because I'm good. Oops! Here comes the gorgon. . . arrrrghhh. . . aaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!

Wallflower

You know how they say that to be a real writer, you're supposed to be able to paper a wall with rejections? I guess I did it wrong. I papered my garbage pail.

I papered my soul with disappointment. I fell, and tried again. I must have been nuts. What is it about this so-called art, this obsession? So many of us want to be writers. Right. I have heard that the writing itself is about 25% of the process. But 25% of what? Of "success". Of "making it", of becoming a literary star.

I once had a friend ask me, "OK, Margaret, if you're so obsessed with all this, tell me. How do you get on the bestseller list?" I went completely blank. I had no idea. I knew it had very little to do with the quality of the work. I had been reviewing books for 20 years. Some of the best books I read were published by tiny literary presses and probably sold 1000 copies, tops.

And then there's the phenomenon of mass-market paperbacks and fat hardcovers that ride the top of the lists for months, even years. How do they get up there, stay up there when the quality is so uniformly awful?

I don't want this blog to be whiny. But I want it to be more focussed than my last one. (Whew, don't ask me about my last one! I was run out of town for being too original. Or for something. Whatever it was, it was pretty vicious.) And I want to try to explore just why I do this. For in a sense, I already achieved my goal. After a lifetime of extreme, obsessive yearning, my first novel came out in 2003. Reviewers said things like "fiction at its finest" and compared me to some of the best-known writers in the country.

And I sold 1000 copies.

The publisher called me to tell me how disappointed she was. At first I thought, oh, she' s emphathizing with me. Then I realized: she's disappointed in me. I was somehow supposed to make a zillion-seller out of this novel, all by myself.

Didn't work. I had been given a book called Guerilla Tactics for Writers or something like that. Every time I tried one of those tactics, I was called down for it, told I shouldn't be doing it.

So why do I keep at this? Jesus, maybe it's because that (by now) I'm not much good at anything else. Since my second novel came out in 2005 (also lavishly reviewed, also sitting on shelves collecting dust), I have written two more novels and a book of poems. I believe these represent my best work.

I'm not sure if it's from bad sales or what, but nobody's interested. I'm not the sort of person who can go on and on writing books and stashing them in a drawer. Hardly anyone understands this (they call it "ego"), but the storyteller needs people sitting around the fire to listen. A concert pianist is not expected to play in an empty hall. And etcetera.

Am I bitter? Some days, maybe. Today I am extremely frustrated because yesterday I was turned down again after allowing my hopes to rise. I just don't know what the fuck to do now.

Am I crazy? I sent out my "first" novel (which was actually my third) sixty-five times, and received sixty-five rejections. Most of these publishers told me it was really quite a good novel, original, and that they were sure it would do well with someone else.

Maybe I shouldn't write on days like this.

I'm like, iconic

Sometimes I think I'm being left behind so swiftly, the people around me are a blur. I'm turning into one of those grannies that picks at grammar and parses sentences.

Or something.

I was never taught to write, not exactly, but reading a gazillion books when I was a grubby little kid taught me something about respect for language. I kind of soaked it in. It hurt me when someone mangled the language, especially in print.

I'm aware of the phenomenon of catch-phrases, words or clumps of words that catch on and become so common that no one notices them any more. The big one right now is "I'm like".

I challenge you to count the number of times each day that you hear "I'm like" (or "he's like", or "they're like," etc.) Everyone says this now, often several times in a sentence. Even Oprah and Katie Couric say it. Does anyone stop to think what it means?

"Like" means, well, either you like something, or you resemble it. "I'm like" seems to be saying, "I don't feel this way, but I feel something like it." It's all happening at a remove.

And don't get me started on "icon/iconic". It proliferates like a cancer. Maybe icon started with computers, who knows, but iconic (which for some reason reminds me of some sort of verbal ice cream cone) has long departed from its original meaning: a person or thing that is representative of an entire culture, a focal point for humanity. (It can also mean, in its original form, a religious object like a statue that becomes an object of veneration.)

Everything's iconic now. Pop singers are iconic. Pants are iconic (if they're Levis). I wince when I see it. Is it one of those words that people think makes them look intelligent if they use it? The worst, but only so far, was an item related to Sex and the City: cupcakes. Yes. Cupcakes are iconic. Or at least, a certain variety sold in New York are iconic.

Maybe some people or things are iconic, like Bogart and Bacall. But they only come along every so often, and usually aren't recognized until after they're dead.

So what's the point of all this? Shit, I got another lousy rejection the other day, and it has me smarting. And aching. I've already published two novels that I am very proud of, but neither one was a hot seller. Since 2005 I've written two more novels and a book of poetry. And I get brushed off everywhere. Agents won't look at me. Why? Maybe because I write in complete sentences! Cupcakes aren't iconic, and I'm not like anything, I am.

The casual mangling of language has become the norm, and if you're like me and care about how to put a sentence together, you're obsolete. Or so it seems right now, after the latest kick in the head has been delivered. I won't quote her exact words, or the Agent Police will get after me.

So I should maybe retitle my latest novel? What should I name the baby?

How's this: "I'm Like, Iconic, Cupcake."

The big rock candy mountain

It ain't been so sweet. But full of rocks, for sure.

When I was a kid, a little girl with a dirty shirt and the knees out of her jeans (or were the knees already out? These were passed down twice from two older brothers, and held together with a safety pin), I wanted nothing more than to burrow myself into a book.

A book with a cover already dusty from use, with the threads of the binding beginning to show through, with that musky smell paper used to take on (and how will we reproduce that smell on all those Kindle readers?). . . a book I wanted to literally dive into to escape the bleakness of my days.

Misty of Chincoteague, The Black Stallion, King of the Wind, all those splendid horses of the mind! And when I wasn't tearing along the beaches of Chincoteague hanging onto the Phantom's mane, there were the children's classics, so much more vivid and frightening than the Disney versions: Pinocchio's stern morality tale, and Bambi with its casual bloodshed and violence, as if to tell juvenile readers, "This, my children, is the way of the world."

It occurred to me, one magical morning, that Someone must have made these mysterious portals happen. Someone must have conjured them, or found them under a cabbage leaf or something. It took a while before I realized that someone must have actually written them, brought them into being.

And then, that was all I wanted to do - all I would ever want to do.

I wanted to make books happen.