I don’t usually publish Daily Rumpus emails online but today I’m making an exception. This email was sent to subscribers on November 2, 2010. …more

“Are you a masochist?” It’s the first thing Bosco asks me. He’s 14 years old now, almost my height, 5′ 8″, creamy white skin, and a small, German nose from my stepmother’s side of the family. …more

In 2005 I began interviewing people I grew up with and transcribing, then editing, the interviews, creating a kind of memoir but in other people’s words. You can read earlier oral histories here. …more

In 2005 I began interviewing people I grew up with and transcribing the interviews, creating a kind of memoir but in other people’s words.

***

Mato — Actor

I went to a Catholic school. I was a shy kid and got beat up by girls. I would express myself through drawings; that’s how I made friends. So when I transferred to the public school in fifth grade I had this chip on my shoulder.

You were the biggest kid in class. On the first day of school we were writing notes about all this violent shit we were going to do to each other. Mrs. Scott found the notes and kind of talked it over with us. We ended up becoming really good friends. The other kids knew not to mess with us, because we would fight. …more

Yesterday there was a blog on HTMLGIANT about apolitical writers. I disagreed with it. First, because The Rumpus has had regular roundups of the news from Egypt. Second, because most serious writers I know are very political, very engaged. I’ve edited three books of political fiction and never had difficulty finding contributors. In 2004 I went with a group of writers to Ohio to conduct voter registration readings and for six years I hosted literary events to raise money for progressive political causes. We called it Operation Ohio.

We didn’t raise that much money, or register that many voters, but we tried. I went into the Cleveland ghetto with Jonathan Ames, clipboards full of voter registration forms. With McSweeney’s we offered reminder phone calls on election day from your favorite authors, a personal call reminding you to vote. The problem wasn’t that authors didn’t care, more the other way around.

At the same time, the events in Egypt are just unfolding. How much do most Americans know about ElBaradei? …more

Argentina lost to Germany today and it made me sad. I didn’t know that I cared. But my roommate got Argentina’s national team logo tattooed on his forearm and because I care about my roommate I care about Argentina. He actually went further than the tattoo. He convinced a local bar that never opened before 4pm to let him open the bar early every day and show the games. He plastered the Mission with posters wheatpasted over advertisements for 3-D movies. He bought several flat-screen TVs (and stole my projector) and created something of a sensation, especially for Argentina fans. Their motto: Every Game. Every Day.

Today they were standing on the street watching through the windows because they couldn’t all fit inside. Waiters who weren’t really waiters brought the people on the sidewalk eggs and coffee. And there was Germany, methodically pushing the ball up the field, their best player a Turkish striker that looks like Peter Lorrie. In the worst moments it was like World War II and Argentina was Belgium. Except, World War II Germany wouldn’t have a Turkish player on the national team. Or a black player…

It seemed like the Germans always had one more player in position, and they didn’t need to look around to know where their teammates were; they had run drills. Perhaps they had been training blindfolded. And Argentina, all blue and white and long haired and beautiful…

Last night, in preparation, his younger brother and sister and her boyfriend and their parents and all their friends filled the front of our apartment. There was a cake and someone cooked empanadas. Someone else brought pizza. The younger brother and his friends had been working the bar with him since the beginning of the tournament, the owners never arrived and the story of how my roommate convinced a bar owner to turn over his bar to my roommate (who is sober) and his alcoholic younger brother and his college friends is a story I’ll never understand. They’ve been sleeping on the floor and the couches. I step over them in the middle of the night. When I see them at the bar they don’t charge me for Ginger-ale or nachos. I think they were afraid I wouldn’t want eight people sleeping in the living room, but I liked it.

When the game was over all the girls surrounded my roommate’s younger brother. He had been out all night drinking and hadn’t gone to sleep. They wanted to comfort him. He was smiling, because he’s always smiling, well adjusted and happy. Different from my roommate, who is wonderful but also slightly tense, who is hard on himself sometimes. In a couple of years the younger brother will have to start going to meetings or he’ll wind up in a bad place, but right now he’s young and handsome and doesn’t seem to feel the strain. The girls huddled around him, older women as well. They wanted to hug him. They wanted to get their picture taken.

My roommate stood by the door to the bar smoking a cigarette. He’d been crying. Just three weeks ago or something he’d stood in our kitchen talking about what a “good team” they were. He said, “we’ve got a good team,” and he meant my other roommate and his brother and also his younger sister who was bartending and probably too young to drink. Everybody else was drunk and this morning when I hugged him after he had stopped crying, though his face was still wet and red and the tears seemed to have dug canals in his cheeks exaggerating the lines on the side of his mouth, I told him he was the drunk whisperer. He was able to take drunks and persuade them to run a bar. He was like a one-armed general leading an army of misfits. He’d created the best bar in the state of California to watch a soccer game, particularly if you were an Argentina fan, and they came. The sidewalks were thick with them, their faces painted blue and white, holding flags. Some wore blue button shirts, or wigs. The walls had tourney brackets pasted and deliberately filled out. There was a section for sitting and a section for standing crushed together, which is of course the best way to watch a game, and he had built this from nothing and for no other reason except the World Cup was the most important thing in his life.

I should say, I don’t understand why that is. Why soccer could be so important that someone would tattoo a team logo in full color on their forearm. But it doesn’t matter. It makes more sense than war. And it makes more sense than tax breaks for the rich. It probably makes more sense than writing a book, but I’m not ready to think about that. To love something that much, or even to watch someone so in love, is a sight. I thought I should film my roommate at the glass door. It was so hot outside, and inside. Everything felt like a construction site. I had even set my alarm for the game on a Saturday. Because that kind of passion is contagious. And it made me think that it’s worth it to build things and I felt good about something having to do with people in general even if I wasn’t sure what that thing I felt good about was. And then I went home and I went back to sleep.

xoxox

stephen

p.s. Saturday is one of the best days to make a donation.

**

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It’s so pretty in San Francisco right now. All the clouds coming in above the blue and pink lights of the 500 Club. There’s the tattoo parlor and the laundrette and close by the bar with the bike rack and Adobe Books where they once organized all the books by color.

It’s cold and blowing and someone in Los Angeles said San Francisco is a city that doesn’t want to admit it’s cold. Others talk about the lack of seasons, how time passes, the summer of love, the speed addicts, Altamont, the sexual revolution, the pro-sex feminists. Lots of people have said San Francisco will make you soft and nobody ever disagreed with that. It’s a gentrified city, the city of Vesuvio and City Lights, though North Beach has become touristy and overpriced. It’s a white city with a huge Chinatown, a one time banking capital, the tip of the dot-com needle. See Leland Stanford’s orange bricks, the Southwest architectural style, the Mavericks looming over Half Moon Bay. All the parks and pastels. Whatever happened here? Everything and nothing. It’s a quiet town at night. The “hipsters” ride up and down the Mission on fixed speed bicycles. People drink single origin medium roasted coffee brewed by the cup. There are mid-priced restaurants that don’t serve anything not grown within thirty miles. The personal is political, gay marriage is a given, relationships have rules but they’re never what you expect. People celebrate naked and don’t wear much makeup. The clubs don’t make you wait to get in.

It’s a colder city than we care to admit. Soon they’ll close down all or some of Dolores Park for renovations. It’s a small place, seven by seven miles, made larger by the hills, but easy to bicycle because every hill has a valley. Only 800,000 people live here but the population density is high. It’s the center of the fifth largest metropolitan area in the country.

I’ve been here 12 years but have only ever gone to one museum. I was fighting with my girlfriend at the time and she asked me not to say anything so we walked around the de Young holding hands, looking at paintings without speaking.

Once the cloud cover’s complete the rain comes. It’s a city with high rents and small apartments. The population is over-educated, teaching jobs are hard to come by. The major newspaper is said to be on the verge of bankruptcy. There are perhaps more well known writers than any city other than New York. It’s a literary town, an art film town. They play a Wurlitzer pipe organ before showings at the Castro Theater. There are hundreds, thousands of places in city limits with views so stunning they steal your breath. The weather is worse than we think but the public transportation is better than we give it credit for. The food is generally good.

When the rain stops the sun comes out glaring across the wet streets. Sometimes I forget we’re on the edge of the country, or why I came here. I remember the first time, when I ended up buying a slice of pie on Union Street and noticing how clean the air was blowing in off the ocean. And the second time with my fiance when the car ran out of gas on the Oakland Bay Bridge. And the third time when I didn’t leave and parked above the Castro wandering down to 18th to hustle drinks. It could have worked out differently, but I didn’t have anywhere better to go at the time.

San Francisco recycles more than any other city in America. The grocery near my house charges upward of $2 an apple. There’s a lot of art and a lot of galleries. It’s expensive, and hard to find an apartment, but it’s an easy city to live in. You don’t need a car, everything’s close by. It’s the birthplace of Burning Man and burner culture and the Folsom Street Fair. Perhaps where I’m going with this is obvious, but not to me. There’s only the east end of the city, below the ball park, the last place left for any real development. It’s the times. They’ve added a muni track and passed propositions and sold off the land. There’s always provisions for below market rate housing, but it doesn’t work so well, though we probably try harder than most other cities would. It’s almost beside the point. Anyway, over time, if you allow yourself to forget, you can stop noticing how beautiful the city is. And it’s so easy to forget in San Francisco, because there are no seasons. If there’s no revolutions or earthquakes and if nobody burns down your apartment, and even then, time just passes without markers. I guess what I’m saying is it’s hard to keep track.

Taylor Antrim, author of The Headmaster Ritual, takes easy shots at memoir zeroing in on Nick Flynn’s The Ticking Is The Bomb and Alex Lemon’s Happy. …more

(note: all of these go out in The Daily Rumpus email, but not all of them are posted on The Rumpus)

I’m on a train again, rambling north into New England, contemplating the east coast, the football playoffs (I have $20 on Minnesota). Last night I thought, while watching a reading, He has an energetic wife, so he has to find his own energy.

And the night before, when The Rumpus had our one year anniversary party (written up here), and Justin Taylor read a short, tight story from his new collection, …more

(note: all of these go out in The Daily Rumpus email, but not all of them are posted on The Rumpus)

I’ve been subscribing to Bob Lefsetz email letter ever since about eight people forwarded something he had written about me. He writes about marketing trends, or actually marketing opinions, mostly around music. Yesterday he sent a note about the dying music business. I can’t say I care about the music business, what I’d like to know is what’s going to happen to the musicians.

I’m curious about marketing these days. That curiosity always pays off with Malcolm Gladwell, but not with anyone else. …more

A couple of days ago a friend wrote and told me my psychiatrist was crazy. Work on getting close to people, he said. The rest will follow. …more

(Note, these go out as part of The Daily Rumpus email. Most of them aren’t posted on the site so consider subscribing to get all the Notes From Book Tour.) …more

In Washington I sold thirty books, or so I hear. In Naperville I sold twenty more. Luis and Cindy Urrea came to see me and I spent the night in their house. I had a reading planned in my foster sister’s apartment  but she cancelled it, which was fine with me, I was getting sick. Also, she’s not really my foster sister but I moved into her mother’s basement nine months before going to college, so it’s basically the same thing. …more

I couldn’t really write a Daily Rumpus today (not a long one certainly, until I decided not to). Why? Last night I was with rock stars. …more

Last night was the big Rumpus event in New York. …more

I’m in a barn on a hundred acres of land trust in upstate New York. I hear a machine going somewhere but outside all I can see are naked trees and then hills descending to a small pond and past that a line of mountains. Nearby is the farmhouse where an Irish man and his wife and three children live. How did I end up here? …more

There was a reading last night in Connecticut. I was told it was a disaster, not because there were only twelve people there, but because of the old woman who owned the building and the used bookstore next door. …more

I’m in the final stretch of my book tour, but it’s a long one with something scheduled every night until December 18, with the exception of six days over Thanksgiving. Yesterday I flew from San Francisco to New York, arriving at the Mixer Reading Series just in time. The series is in a basement and I felt dizzy. Sometimes flying makes me a little ill. The bookseller didn’t show up but I had books with me. Tip to young authors, always have your own books. …more

I’m back in San Francisco for a week. That week is almost up. I’ve been doing events of one kind or another for The Adderall Diaries almost every day. On Wednesday, in San Jose, I interviewed Denis Johnson. He said he didn’t read that much anymore. He said he watched a lot of situation comedies. He was on his way to Los Angeles next to pitch a television show. He also said that before he won the National Book Award he had never received a fan letter from someone who wasn’t also a writer. …more

On the 44th day of book tour I borrowed my friend’s car and drove south to Oberlin College, 2.5 hours down the 23 and across the 80/90 toll road. I have an iPhone now and I read short articles with the device perched against the steering wheel, swerving toward my destination. …more

Let’s start with last night, because that’s when it happened. Or maybe the night before, reading for fifteen people in someone’s living room in Ft. Lauderdale. There was a woman there poured into a tight black dress with lace webbing across her breasts, feet bound in some cross between high heels and sandals. She looked like she stepped from an Eric Stanton comic. Late at night we were in the bedroom and she made a point of saying she hadn’t bought my book. I think I was supposed to give her a copy as a symbol of my affection, or a thank-you for hers, but I didn’t want to do that. …more

I landed in Washington, D.C. and went to the Lincoln Memorial where I did a short reading and Q&A for Barrel House Magazine. It was a quickly put together event and there were only maybe ten or eleven people. We went out for a drink after and it was fun but it also reminded me to protect the wind in my sails. That wind is valuable. I spent the night in a friends house then drove to Richmond for a reading in an area known as The Fan.

Richmond is a fascinating place. The home where I did the reading was one street off Monument Boulevard, lined with giant tributes to Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis, and Robert E. Lee. I was raised in Chicago and I’ve always thought of these men as people who got a lot of people killed defending the south’s right to decide whether or not they would have slaves. Of course, there’s other ways of looking at it, or maybe not. Either way the monuments are beautiful.

There were twenty people in the home that night, middle class or upper middle class. Some artists and teachers. It was an educated crowd and it was the first time I’ve ever sold more books than the actual number of people in attendance.

The house was built in 1905, had hard wood floors and I had a bedroom on the second floor with its own bathroom and porch. There was a small dog that that bit my leg. I’d been arguing with Andrew over artist’s compensation and it seemed as if Andrew was controlling the dog’s mind. My basic point about artist’s compensation is take as much as you can get and no one should make more from an artist’s work than the artist, but really nobody owes us anything. I don’t like it when writers think they’re entitled. We chose this life and there should be sacrifices to be made for it. I say much more on the topic in this essay.

Back to Richmond. The hostess’ boyfriend was an incredible musician, a saxophonist and singer for a band called Chez Roue (the link does nothing to get at the magic of seeing this band live). And that night, following the reading, we saw them play and I thought, here is an undiscovered Tom Waits wailing his heart out.

The next night I read in a home in a suburb of Richmond. The streets were winding and the homes were recently built. All of the stores were in shopping malls along the main street, which was a highway. In other words, there were streets you lived on and bundles of stores on lots where you did your shopping but no streets where you could live and also shop. The people at that second reading in Richmond were interesting and nice, just like the first event, but they were also different. Again there were about twenty people, but nobody at this reading had ever been to a literary event before though several told me how much they loved to read.

The host for that event had first found out about The Adderall Diaries on Chuck Palahniuk’s blog. She signed up to receive an advance copy and that’s how she came to invite me to do an event in her home. She was a nurse and many of the attendees worked in the hospital with her or went to her gym. There was a trainer from the gym there, an expert in Brazilian Judo, who used to compete in ultimate fighting events and told me he was more fit at 38 than he had been at 20. He reminded me of my old friend Pat Kelly, the most charismatic kid in my neighborhood growing up.

It was a population, I thought, that had been abandoned by the literary establishment much the way John Kerry abandoned so much of America in 2004. These were smart, engaged, middle class people living away from the urban center. The only books they were likely to find out about were the big sellers, and Chuck Palahniuk who is one of the few literary writers to penetrate the “other” America, which is really most of America.

Maybe I’m not being nuanced enough in my presentation here. But what I think is that publishers only try to sell literary books in urban centers and to aspiring writers. The giant MFA literary industrial complex has created a specific but limited market for a certain type of book. But what about the readers that don’t want to be writers? The readers that read only for pleasure. How do we introduce our books to everybody else?

I didn’t like one Richmond reading more than the other. They were entirely different. Every time I read in someone’s home I’m reading to a reflection of that person’s life. But that house outside of Richmond was the doorway to a much bigger world that I worried I was not connected to in any way. I found myself wondering how to get more books to that population.

From Richmond I continued to Charlottesville and today I’m back at Dulles about to fly down to Ft. Lauderdale. I stayed in a hotel last night. It was a $70 extravagance on a shoestring book tour but there was free breakfast in the morning and the air outside feels cool and good.

A few months ago for some reason I started following Meaghan O’Connell’s twitter posts and decided, while I was in New York, she was the person I wanted to interview for my Book Tour Interview series. …more

Sometimes I think about money. But what about money? Last night I went wheat pasting in Williamsburg. I was with two girls in their twenties. I said I hoped they weren’t still hanging posters on construction sites with homemade glue when they were in their late thirties. …more

(I’m interviewing people I meet as I tour across the country) Padma Viswanathan moved to Fayetteville in the summer of 2006. Before Fayetteveille she lived in Tuscon where she did an MFA in creative writing and before that she lived in San Francisco with my ex-girlfriend. …more

For the next couple of months I’m on book tour for my memoir, The Adderall Diaries. It occurred to me to start interviewing some of the people I meet. I’m hoping not to interview the most interesting or eccentric people. I’m going to focus instead on the people I spend the most time with, often the ones who let me stay in their house. There will be exceptions, of course. …more

It’s noon and I’m leaving Columbus. Last night’s reading was kind of a hybrid. I was invited to read at OSU by Michelle Herman but it was unpaid, so it was kind of like a house party, but more like a University reading. There were at least 50 people there and the local B&N had a table and I think they sold a dozen books. It was mostly MFA kids, young and earnest, and they weren’t all from the midwest but they seemed like they were.

After the reading we went to a college bar, the kind graduate students go to with thick wood booths and tables and a pinball machine. It was really a great time, though I can’t put my finger on exactly why. It might have been the ride from the airport with Kyle Miner who’s living the post MFA life with a book of stories out, a couple of kids, teaching classes up in Toledo, finishing what sounds like a fantastic novel and contemplating law school. Or it might have been Claire, the student I stayed with. Or the walk for donuts at 10:30 on a Wednesday night, which felt late in that town, especially on the strip.

I tried to get in Claire’s bed. It was a big, comfortable bed. She said no, how would she explain it to the boy she was getting to know. I said there was nothing to explain to the boy, nothing’s going to happen. It’s like sleeping with your gay friend. But she wasn’t so sure. She had been drinking and I don’t drink. I slept on the air mattress in the other room.

I think for a while I didn’t enjoy being on the road. Now I enjoy it again. It’s like running away, but in the best sense of the term. Every runaway knows it’s all about timing and luck. You look at what’s coming up behind you, then out the window to what’s waiting ahead, which you never really know but you can guess at based on weather conditions. Then you step into the cold air, move as fast as you can.

I’m back on book tour and I have many things on my mind. The unfortunate thing might be that you publish a book and you learn certain things and then years later you publish another book, and by then everything has changed.

I’ll say this. Last night I was part of a group reading. There were maybe a hundred people in the room, and as comedians say, I killed it. Why do they say they “killed” their audience? Why so adversarial? There was a line of people to talk to after the reading; everybody wanted me on their radio show and open mic. I’m not bragging, I’m making a point. I think I sold five books.

I went to a book release party once south of San Francisco. The woman throwing the party was well off. Her friends were well off. They bought her anthology two or three at a time, making presents of the book for their cousins and nephews. I remember asking myself what it was about. But it was obvious what it was about. It was about money.

Of course, that’s a brutal and dangerous oversimplification. 90% of all books are bought on the recommendation of somebody else. Or are they? How do you explain The Nanny Diaries? And why would you want to? When my novel Happy Baby was released it had no marketing at all. It was reviewed maybe three or four times, but the few reviews were overwhelmingly positive, and the novel “over-performed” (I’m making that word up, though I’m sure it’s already in common use).

I’ve seen many books come out to gigantic starts. It’s the next Eat Pray Love, the next Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, the next Corrections. But those books seem to disappear because they aren’t the books they’re supposed to be the next of.

Or maybe not. And what about all the great books that also disappear? And what about the great books that keep reappearing and then disappearing again. Books like Stoner and The Car Thief. You get endless shots at being brought back into of print, returned to the surface where you can stand on the edge of the board and contemplate diving into the shallow pool.

I’m on my way to Columbus, Ohio to read at the University. I’m fond of meeting new people, talking about The Adderall Diaries, selling books one at a time. Maybe that’s all the meaning I need. Maybe it’s enough just to know that tonight I have plans.

**

But there’s more. I’m not even going to begin to talk about the fear. It’s going to require some real research to come to some truths about cowardice. I want to find the science of it, interview the world’s foremost expert on threat. I will say that cowardice is not well represented in art. We write about the beauty of teburculosis, Jane’s flushed cheeks and weak cough, but we never write about the beauty of cowardice. Everybody despises a coward. Tell someone you’re a coward and they’ll insist, “That’s not true. You’re one of the bravest people I know.” As if admitting to cowardice disproves it. I remember when I was in the group homes all the other kids insisted they had never lost a fight. I wondered who was losing all the fights, other than me.

And what if, instead of using cowardice when writing about vilians, or to show the flaws in our protagonist, we wrote about the boy on the corner, feet planted firmly on the cold cement, unable to do what he knew he should do, which is walk quickly across the street, or scream for help, or even wave at a police car that drove quickly past. His thoughts slowed so if you could see inside his head you would notice the electrical currents, soggy and pink, idling along his nerve endings. The currents were big thoughts, too big. He couldn’t make sense of any of them, and the result was that he was helpless when he came face to face with what would happen next.

**

I’m not ready to go there. I’m reading about Justin Hall, the first blogger to “overshare.” And I came across this line in Scott Rosnberg’s Say Everything: “Writers who tell stories about themselves, their families, and friends always walk a tightrope: you fall off one side if you stop telling the truth; you fall off the other if you hurt people you care about, or use them as fodder for your career. Dishonesty to the left, selfishness to the right.”

I’m thinking about blogging and creating stories from experience. I’m thinking of the difference between a blog and an online magazine. I was sitting next to a man reading a trashy novel by C.W. Morton and I was reading this thoughtful post by Mark Athitakis on my new iPhone. And I wondered which one of us was pissing on culture and making the world a dumber place. I decided he was, but I’m biased. This is not a survey.

So yes, it’s all changed. If you’re just starting your novel or memoir it will be changed quite a bit more when your book comes out. With that in mind it’s important you don’t read anything about publishing while you work on your book because Publisher’s Weekly knows nothing about the landscape you’ll toss your heart into. There’ll be a new species of lion in a different jungle. But one thing will remain the same: creating art will not make you loveable. You can create art instead of learning how to love, but it’s like putting a band-aid on a river.

I’m in a backyard in Las Vegas, a week into this book tour, the morning after my third home reading. I’m still collecting data, but in the three homes every crowd has been different. Last night there were some people who came because of the write-up in the Las Vegas Weekly. And there were some journalists who are going to do follow up pieces in the local papers. There were also a fair number of sex workers and artists, good looking people, stylish.

The reading was outside. There were thirty people or so in attendance, but I only sold ten books, a little less than Austin or Lincoln. My theory? Hang a sign on the book table with the price of the books. Something that says, “BUY A BOOK.”

There were cupcakes, donated by Retro Bakery, and coffee, also donated. There was a very pretty girl with a dog and we sat on the couch together and I asked if I could lay on her for a little bit and she said I was just like her puppy, so I pressed against her and laid my head on her shoulder for a bit, which was nice. You need a little of that when you’re traveling.