I had just seen, and had my mind blown up by, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981). We all know it's the classic of classics today. Back then, nobody hardly knew what they were looking at. They hadn't seen anything like it. RAIDERS was an experience unlike any I'd ever had or have had. A unique experience, striking just the right cords in a boy while subtly introducing him to the more stylized violence of the 1980s.
More to the point, I went home after seeing the movie and wrote RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, with illustrations, as I remembered it. The thing was, what arrived on yellow paper wasn't exactly the movie I'd seen. It was like the movie I'd seen plus my electrified imagination. Next thing I know, Indiana Jones is teamed up with Kung Fu-Grip GI Joe and fighting dinosaurs on Monster Island or something.If I'd had the unbounded genius of Jack Kirby, my favorite comic book artist, my comic/prose version of RAIDERS would have been praised as a jazz player's approach to a classic. Everything I knew was great and cool through my whole television/movie-watching life was unleashed by Indiana Jones.
I didn't know I wanted to be a writer then.
I wouldn't figure that out until around 1988 when a high school English teacher dame said I had aptitude for writing. By that time I was sixteen and my school career was a trainwreck. Issuing from a divorced household, with a young mother too wrapped up in her own affairs to enforce good study habits (which consisted of me doing homework in front of the television, so you know how that worked out) and a father's alienation warping my sense of responsibility, I'd failed 3rd grade and embarked on a low-C, high-D average. I was in trouble constantly, crippled by social phobia (as it's called today; it was just shyness back when), essentially friendless and, of course, about as removed from girls socially as you could get.
Where was Lee Carter, my strong grandfather who told me, "I don't want you to be a grease monkey like me. Do something with your life."? I didn't know he'd be dead, from diabetes-induced heart failure the year after I discovered RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. I was as close to him, as many put it, as "his shadow."
And in a sense, Lee Carter's death revealed that I was a shadow. I had nothing inside of me without him. When he departed this world, he took my identity with him. I spent the years leading into high school withdrawn and angry, abused and sullen, ignorant of any endeavor except to be alone.
So any news was good news, which this English teacher provided. She told me I should read some Ernest Hemingway from the school library, because that's who I might become. A writer. A novelist. And, at least, a focus for all that rage.
I didn't know I wanted to be a writer then.
I wouldn't figure that out until around 1988 when a high school English teacher dame said I had aptitude for writing. By that time I was sixteen and my school career was a trainwreck. Issuing from a divorced household, with a young mother too wrapped up in her own affairs to enforce good study habits (which consisted of me doing homework in front of the television, so you know how that worked out) and a father's alienation warping my sense of responsibility, I'd failed 3rd grade and embarked on a low-C, high-D average. I was in trouble constantly, crippled by social phobia (as it's called today; it was just shyness back when), essentially friendless and, of course, about as removed from girls socially as you could get.Where was Lee Carter, my strong grandfather who told me, "I don't want you to be a grease monkey like me. Do something with your life."? I didn't know he'd be dead, from diabetes-induced heart failure the year after I discovered RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. I was as close to him, as many put it, as "his shadow."
And in a sense, Lee Carter's death revealed that I was a shadow. I had nothing inside of me without him. When he departed this world, he took my identity with him. I spent the years leading into high school withdrawn and angry, abused and sullen, ignorant of any endeavor except to be alone.So any news was good news, which this English teacher provided. She told me I should read some Ernest Hemingway from the school library, because that's who I might become. A writer. A novelist. And, at least, a focus for all that rage.
The teacher, the gods bless her and curse her at the same time, knew what I needed.
She looked into me as if I was made of glass and saw an isolated, alienated child. Her response was appropriate, and she gave me the best chance I ever had to fulfill a true life of purpose. Needless to say, Hemingway struck a cord in much the manner that RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK had. A critical moment of discovery. I devoured his work, his contemporaries' work, and compared everything I did on paper to what they had done.A mistake, surely. I thought I had it made. A little nose to the grindstone, a little sweat, and I was gonna be okay. At last.
If I'd managed to attend college beyond a few classes at the local community college, I might have had a plan on how to succeed as a writer. Unfortunately, I never managed to overcome the terrible sensation of dread when entering a classroom, of being asked questions in front of strangers judging the back of my head and my icy profile. I was scared to death to go to college, and I never did. Instead, owing to the times and my obsession with writers like Stephen King, Richard Matheson, and Ray Bradbury, I figured to circumvent college education and hack my way into writing stories for popular, and not so popular, magazines. I worked tirelessly on imitations of King, Harlan Ellison, Bradbury, and the like. I sought my own "style" by emulating and, as I understood it, developing my own.
This would have been a great stradegy in 1958.
But this was 1990, and the magazines and book publishers were already feeling the cloying presence of the "blockbuster" mentality begun by Stephen King himself. Magazines were no longer testing grounds for eventual novelists, they were advertisements for Name Authors. Understandably, these Names drew the real money, or any money at all. My work, awful as it was and no matter how good it became, would never be a thick enough armor between my delusions and the realities of the day. I wasn't going to be "discovered." I'd been born in the wrong era to be that kind of writer.
Another decade went by, a growing pile of failed novels, a haphazard "deal" with a literary agent in California (scam, in other words), and a steadily growing mental illness. That's right, folks, you can actually get sick from too much isolation and lack of normal pursuits, like sex. Eventually you turn into a guy who can't stand in a grocery store line without feeling like his skin is being flayed. You'll cross a street to avoid walking in step with a passer-by. I just figured I hated people, as they are, you know...people. But it turns out I was the fucked-up one. Takes two and all that. I also spent eight years sharpening chainsaw chains and lawnmower blades at Morton's Stihl and BMW shop in Spotsylvania. You can still find it on Rt 208. I'd put on a pair of plastic goggles and a pair of those big stereo-boy ear protectors, and go into a dank room dripping with parts-washing solution and brackish water (which I used to cool the almost red hot steel of the lawnmower blades), and I'd spend hours sending metal spark shaving over my shoulder while grinding steel on a rotating stone. Sharpening chainsaw chains was pretty harsh as well. Chink chink chink, the slender spinning stone gouged into the chain "teeth", making them sharp once again.
I spent a lot of time talking to myself in my head about being a writer, and what I was writing. I did everything on autopilot, while I dreamed my stories. I drove one poor middle-aged mechanic half up the wall with my chatter about writing, while he worked slowly on some small engine, cigarette dangling off his lip or burning in an ashtray. That man died of skin cancer in recent times.
He heard all my dreams and fantasies and hopes and big talk, and he agreed, "Yeah, maybe it'll happen. Just keep doing it. You gotta keep doing it." I feel sorry Jim listened to all that guff. He was a big ugly guy who still Brylcreemed his hair like a kid in the 1950s, with a severe underbite that looked like his lower jaw had been blown off with a shotgun. Eight years we worked together, most every day side by side at some point, with me talking to him. I thought he was a slope-browed idiot, because he didn't care about books, or writing styles, or character integrity. But he was exactly the kind of man who probably ran the publishing houses and pulp magazines back in the 1950s. I know now that being "the writer" is only a small part of being a man who knows how to do something. If you have no ability to exist, to have an impact on your life and the world, then you cannot be anything but a ghost. Or a shadow.
I've been working for a big old regional library in Virginia, which you can find the website for right on this here page. Eleven years I've been a library "clerk", which means a handyman, a security guard, a page, a cataloger, and just about anything else that requires a man. A man with a strong back and a weak mind, as the working men used to say.
But originally, I believed I'd become a better writer by osmosis, soaking in all those thousands of books and writers. But no, if I'm better at all it's because I'm older, and my brain sees what it refused to see when I was young: just because you say it's so, don't make it so.
I'm going to be 39 years old in December. I've never been paid for a work of fiction in my life. I've come to grips with demons and monsters inside of me, as we all do who live long enough. I discover there are more and more where those came from, but somehow they haven't the same power. It's like we understand each other. I am them, and they are me.
I still attempt to write. Every day, after my job is done, my work begins. I write whatever I can in the evening. Mostly I don't write. But I'm there. I have committed to a game of chess, and I'm waiting for the opponent. I don't have to worry about a wife, or children, needing me, alienated by my endeavor. I have no wife, no children. I have a very select few personal friends, and they identify me as a man. They think I'm mostly good, somewhat evil, and potentially a man who will accomplish what he set out to do, as far back as 1981.
If I'd managed to attend college beyond a few classes at the local community college, I might have had a plan on how to succeed as a writer. Unfortunately, I never managed to overcome the terrible sensation of dread when entering a classroom, of being asked questions in front of strangers judging the back of my head and my icy profile. I was scared to death to go to college, and I never did. Instead, owing to the times and my obsession with writers like Stephen King, Richard Matheson, and Ray Bradbury, I figured to circumvent college education and hack my way into writing stories for popular, and not so popular, magazines. I worked tirelessly on imitations of King, Harlan Ellison, Bradbury, and the like. I sought my own "style" by emulating and, as I understood it, developing my own.This would have been a great stradegy in 1958.
But this was 1990, and the magazines and book publishers were already feeling the cloying presence of the "blockbuster" mentality begun by Stephen King himself. Magazines were no longer testing grounds for eventual novelists, they were advertisements for Name Authors. Understandably, these Names drew the real money, or any money at all. My work, awful as it was and no matter how good it became, would never be a thick enough armor between my delusions and the realities of the day. I wasn't going to be "discovered." I'd been born in the wrong era to be that kind of writer.
Another decade went by, a growing pile of failed novels, a haphazard "deal" with a literary agent in California (scam, in other words), and a steadily growing mental illness. That's right, folks, you can actually get sick from too much isolation and lack of normal pursuits, like sex. Eventually you turn into a guy who can't stand in a grocery store line without feeling like his skin is being flayed. You'll cross a street to avoid walking in step with a passer-by. I just figured I hated people, as they are, you know...people. But it turns out I was the fucked-up one. Takes two and all that. I also spent eight years sharpening chainsaw chains and lawnmower blades at Morton's Stihl and BMW shop in Spotsylvania. You can still find it on Rt 208. I'd put on a pair of plastic goggles and a pair of those big stereo-boy ear protectors, and go into a dank room dripping with parts-washing solution and brackish water (which I used to cool the almost red hot steel of the lawnmower blades), and I'd spend hours sending metal spark shaving over my shoulder while grinding steel on a rotating stone. Sharpening chainsaw chains was pretty harsh as well. Chink chink chink, the slender spinning stone gouged into the chain "teeth", making them sharp once again.
I spent a lot of time talking to myself in my head about being a writer, and what I was writing. I did everything on autopilot, while I dreamed my stories. I drove one poor middle-aged mechanic half up the wall with my chatter about writing, while he worked slowly on some small engine, cigarette dangling off his lip or burning in an ashtray. That man died of skin cancer in recent times.
He heard all my dreams and fantasies and hopes and big talk, and he agreed, "Yeah, maybe it'll happen. Just keep doing it. You gotta keep doing it." I feel sorry Jim listened to all that guff. He was a big ugly guy who still Brylcreemed his hair like a kid in the 1950s, with a severe underbite that looked like his lower jaw had been blown off with a shotgun. Eight years we worked together, most every day side by side at some point, with me talking to him. I thought he was a slope-browed idiot, because he didn't care about books, or writing styles, or character integrity. But he was exactly the kind of man who probably ran the publishing houses and pulp magazines back in the 1950s. I know now that being "the writer" is only a small part of being a man who knows how to do something. If you have no ability to exist, to have an impact on your life and the world, then you cannot be anything but a ghost. Or a shadow.I've been working for a big old regional library in Virginia, which you can find the website for right on this here page. Eleven years I've been a library "clerk", which means a handyman, a security guard, a page, a cataloger, and just about anything else that requires a man. A man with a strong back and a weak mind, as the working men used to say.
But originally, I believed I'd become a better writer by osmosis, soaking in all those thousands of books and writers. But no, if I'm better at all it's because I'm older, and my brain sees what it refused to see when I was young: just because you say it's so, don't make it so.I'm going to be 39 years old in December. I've never been paid for a work of fiction in my life. I've come to grips with demons and monsters inside of me, as we all do who live long enough. I discover there are more and more where those came from, but somehow they haven't the same power. It's like we understand each other. I am them, and they are me.
I still attempt to write. Every day, after my job is done, my work begins. I write whatever I can in the evening. Mostly I don't write. But I'm there. I have committed to a game of chess, and I'm waiting for the opponent. I don't have to worry about a wife, or children, needing me, alienated by my endeavor. I have no wife, no children. I have a very select few personal friends, and they identify me as a man. They think I'm mostly good, somewhat evil, and potentially a man who will accomplish what he set out to do, as far back as 1981. I find I don't want to be a photo on the back of a hardback novel, the wealthy white man in expensive slacks poised with hand on chin, peering out from some black and white paradise of stillness and peace, isolated by publishing validation, finally respectfully alone. It's easy to mock the stilted poise of the Author, and I like the writer better who isn't "good enough" for stiff cardboard, whose broken-spined thumb-oiled paperbacks end up propping a stack of dusty boxes packed with darkness, mouse shit and lost toys, and beneath all of that old photographs of people who died, some happily, some in agony, and some with barely a whisper.
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