Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
ANd they're getting harder and harder to find.
  

    
Here's where I demonstrate what a full-service author I am... head
over to http://store.portagenewspapersupply.com/servlet/StoreFront and
you've found 'em.
  

    
They are awesome for anybody who takes any kind of notes in short
phrases, unless you actual do outline indentation across a page.  I was
always too lazy to do that.  

Charlie, do you have multiple notebooks for multiple projects -- and
if not, how the hell do you find stuff in those?  I love notetaking on
paper, but the retrieval is much more difficult after being spoiled by
computer and internet search!
  

    
And here's where I demonstrate what a disorganized author I am. While
I do manage to keep each project in its own computer file(s), the
longhand notebooks are quite random. I pick one up to suit my mood when
I start working -- maybe a Clairefontaine, maybe a Miquelrius, maybe
something from the Japanese stationery store in S.F.

The result is that I may have a single notebook whose pages hold work
on a screenplay from years ago, a scene in "The Enthusiast," a humor
piece I wrote in July, and today's work on the new book. Not what you'd
call a system, but it reminds me that I've gotten things done
sometimes, which is bolstering.
  

    
Hi, I'm Ed, and I'm a buying pens at Kinyukonia's Stationery Annex in
San Francisco addict. I've only hit the hard stuff once, at a branch of
Tokyu Hands in Tokyo, but I've chipped again and again in Japantown. 

However, I can't make heads or tails of most of the stuff I find in
old notebooks, because I can't read my own notes a lot of the time. The
notes lasted as notes until they could be processed, and after that...
  

    
What's really disconcerting is to pick up an old notebook, find a
batch of dialogue between two characters, and be unable to remember who
these people are or what the project was. It all gets a little
kaleidoscopic sometimes...
  

    
Here's my strategy, notebook-wise. Put the initial project in the
front of the book. Then, when that notebook happemns to be the one at
hand when you need to make notes abotu something else, start on the
back page and work backwards. Then, when you have to use it again,
start randomly in the middle. Then fill in the interstices as
necessary, as random as possible. Put as many phone numbers, email
addresses, recipes, bus schedules, etc. as you can. Then vaguely
remember that the notes for that journey, contact, story, etc., are in
the blue notebook. The real fun is in the hunt, and even more fun is
sending the notebook to a fact checker with vague instructions on how
to find what they need.
  

    
So glad to know my system is spreading.
  

    
When you are working on fiction, do you read other fiction?  If so,
does the style or voice influence what you are doing, one way or the
other?
  

    
An excellent question, and one that's bedeviled me at times. I do
worry about being "infected" by another writer's style if I read
fiction while writing fiction. But I read some fiction anyway, since
(a) writing a novel takes a long time, and life is too short to go
without fiction for that long, and (b) I think novelists should read
what other novelists are doing. It's an R&D kind of field. There are
advances.

I think the bedrock solution is to have a distinct sound for what
you're writing. Once you get that sound solidly in place (which may
happen well after the start of the writing), I think you're safer
reading other people.

I like to think "The Enthusiast" has a pretty particular voice. That
voice wouldn't be at all appropriate for the book I'm writing now --
I'm still working on the sound for that. But in the case of this new
book, the threat from fiction is somewhat diminished by the need for
research -- I'm busy reading a stack of nonfiction that's already a
tall tower, and growing.
  

    
Charlie, I loved The Enthusiast, and so did my wife--which is kind of
a rare thing (we usually don't read the same novels, and more often
than not when we do, we respond very differently to them), so I can
personally attest to at least one unique facet of your book's
excellence. Also, having been an editor at two enthusiast magazines
over the past decade, and having written for many others over the past
two decades, I thought your depiction of the world of enthusiast-mag
publishing was eerily accurate, right down to the megalomaniac
publisher. By the way, my favorite magazine title was Cozy: The
Magazine of Tea. I still chuckle over that, a good two months after I
read the book.

I want to say that as I read the book, I laughed out loud and just
plain delighted in the humor, in the dry wit of the narration, in
Henry's acerbic take on modern culture. But what is sticking with me
now are the darker undercurrents: what happens to Henry's dad (both
early on and later), what happens to Barney, what (and who) is behind
what happens to Barney, etc. Even though Henry's perspective eventually
becomes more wholesome (if I can use that word), I'm still chewing on
those other elements. I'm imagining you intended for me to feel more
resolved about it by now. (I'm trying to speak generally about these
points so as not to give anything away. Hope I'm succeeding, without
being too cryptic.)

Anyway, if I were able to formulate a question or three about the
book, I'd ask things like: 

What were you aiming for with that juxtaposition of the lighthearted
and the more unsettling? 

Do you think "enthusiasms" are a distraction from the more serious
issues or situations in life? (That's not intended as a loaded
question; I'm curious to hear what you might have to say,
even--especially--if you don't think that at all.)

Would you say that Henry is or becomes a kind of enthusiast, and if
so, what kind? (If that wouldn't be telling, that is.)

In any case, thanks for one of the more pleasurable literary
discoveries of the last few years.
  

    
(Just a reminder to offsite readers, if you want to ask Charlie Haas a
question of your own, you can email it to <inkwell@well.com>)
  

    
Phil, thanks so much for liking the book, and for the excellent
questions.

> What were you aiming for with that juxtaposition of the lighthearted
and the more unsettling? 

It may sound pretentious (or flip), but I was aiming for an impression
of life. (Not a documentation, just an impression.) 

I think one of the hardest and most crucial things we do in life is to
deal with that juxtaposition all the time -- absurdity and irony in
such proximity to tragedy and loss. Not just in proximity, but marbling
through one another. Not just marbling through, but each side being a
lens through which we view the other.

I have great affection for some purely comic novels and some purely
tragic ones, but I think my favorites will always be the "serious
humorists" who mix their emotional notes in imitation of life. So
Stanley Elkin is a very big deal to me, and I think "The Franchiser,"
to which "The Enthusiast" owes significant debts, might be his greatest
book. Recently I read another very good example, Jane Gardam's "Old
Filth." I'm sure the people reading this will think of favorites of
their own. 

> Do you think "enthusiasms" are a distraction from the more serious
issues or situations in life? 

Yes, to differing degrees depending on the enthusiast in question. I
think the distraction can range from healthy to crazy. We all know
people who've disappeared into a "hobby" and not come out. On the other
hand, try taking my enthusiasms away from me.

One of my formative moments was when Jon Carroll sent me to Las Vegas
to cover an Elvis Presley fan convention on the first anniversary of
Elvis's death in 1978. Those people were pretty obsessed. I think one
of the seeds for the book was planted right there.

> Would you say that Henry is or becomes a kind of enthusiast, and if
so, what kind?

Terrific question. I'd say yes, although the whole business hinges on
different shadings of the word "enthusiasm."

Early in the writing it became clear to me that, if this character
spends all that time hanging around other people's enthusiasms, the
question will arise: what's his going to be? And I didn't think we were
talking about another crazy sport or hobby, but about a policy toward
life that would enable him to notice the beauty (and, yeah, deal with
the losses).

Or, as my wife said when we were talking about having suspense in the
story, "The suspense is, will Henry become a real boy?" I think she's
right, and I think he does.
  

    

> I think one of the hardest and most crucial things we do in life is to deal
> with that juxtaposition all the time -- absurdity and irony in such
> proximity to tragedy and loss. Not just in proximity, but marbling through
> one another. Not just marbling through, but each side being a lens through
> which we view the other.

Yes.  Well said.
  

    
Great answers, Charlie, and beautifully expressed. Thanks. And I loved
your wife's observation. Pinocchio lives!
  

    
I do hope someone asks me something soon. As it is, I'm being forced
to work on my new book.
  

    
What's your new book about?
  

    
For the cause of helping you to productively procrastinate, I'll add
another question--have you tried and failed to caulk a shower yourself?
 You described that so well that I went to look at my showers, to see
how well they were caulked.  
  

    
Maria, thanks for that. I have replaced bathroom wall tiles, but have
not caulked a shower. (Were yours OK?)

David, the new novel is a family / historical saga that involves the
checkered history of "alternative" movements (political, social,
psychological, musical, dietary, sartorial, and more) in the 20th
Century. I'm intrigued by the fact that "the '60s" had started by 1910.
I have the late eden ahbez and a number of other interesting people in
mind. So far it's difficult and a lot of fun.
  

    
Is Eden Ahbez the guy who wrote "Nature Boy"?

Charlie, did you ever read T.C. Boyle's "The Road to Wellville"? It's
about American health nuts in the 1890s or so. Funnier'n shit.
  

    
Is this one going to have a mixtape, too? The Enthusiast, for those of
you who foolishly haven't gotten a copy yet (it's in paperback!
Cheap!), has one of those study-guide things at the end that the
publisher, presumably asked for, and among the ways Charlie subverted
that was to have a mixtape, with a song for each character. Ingenious.
  

    
>Charlie, did you ever read T.C. Boyle's "The Road to Wellville"?
>It's about American health nuts in the 1890s or so. Funnier'n shit.

And if you like that, you'll love Sarah Ruhl's play "In the Next
Room," which is about one of the Kelloggs' (Boyle's book is about the
cereal magnates, who started out as health spa magnates serving corn
flakes to the guests) lesser known techniques--pelvic massage, used to
relieve the pelvic congestion thought to cause hysteria and
neurasthenia. In the play, the massage is provided by an electric
vibrator with a very special tip for the gents.

I got your book (amazon got it to me in like 18 hours) and really
enjoying it. Will jump in here asap.
  

    
(Our showers were caulked very neatly--I imagine by a professional. 
Though it looks like we need to re-do the grouting in one of them.)
  

    
There's also a pretty neat movie of The Road to Wellville, which
includes things described in #72.
  

    
Charlie may have seen "In the Next Room," aka "The Vibrator Play," because it
premiered out here at the Berkeley Rep.