Happy Holidays, and shut the hell up!
I like Christmas, I want to get that out there right from the start. Christmas is the season when everyone takes a deep breath and relaxes a little, it’s a time to rest and renew, a season of blockbuster new movies and the cheerful reunion of old friends. Alan Rickman uttered my favorite Christmas movie line in Die Hard when he espoused “It’s Christmas Theo, is the time of miracles. So be of good cheer… and call me when you hit that last lock!” Christmas, like a good Bruce Willis flick, is a whole lot of fun. If you can’t find something to like about Christmas just park the car in the garage, shut the door and leave the motor running.
Chicago’s big on Christmas. From Macy’s well-intentioned efforts to recreate the windows of Marshall Field’s, to the lights on Michigan Avenue, the city puts its best foot forward. Cabbies smile and let you cut in front of them in traffic. People say hello to their neighbors. It doesn’t last but it’s fun for a while.
In Chicago we tell ourselves that the cold weather is actually an integral part of the holiday, that those poor fools who are hanging garland from their palm trees are missing out on the real spirit of the season; of course we’re full of shit but who cares? I like the way that businesses slow down a bit and people drink and eat a bit more. I like the look on the faces of little kids when they see Santa at the mall, and the look on Santa’s face when one of those little kids takes a piss in his lap. Ho Ho Ho.
What I don’t like is the typically American way in which different factions try to hijack the holiday to promote their own particular agenda. First and foremost, of course, is the whole Christ’s birthday lobby, followed closely by their atheist counterparts. Yes the atheists have it on the facts but the Christians have idealism and good cheer on their side. At any rate, what’s the big deal? Come on guys, have another egg-nog, just let it lie.
Anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of history knows that there’s no basis for declaring December 25th Christ’s birthday. In fact, early Christians decried the annual and ancient celebrations that occurred at that time of the year as heathen tribute to the old guard of the gods. As late as the 17th Century, the Puritans of early New England, those most dour and devout of our founding fathers, subscribed to the pagan celebration theory and eschewed Christmas canoodling. No, Christmas falls where it does on the Roman calendar because the Roman Brass – either Emperor Constantine or, a few centuries later, the Catholic Church – wanted to consolidate the peasant vote. Pragmatic politicians that they were, they folded the immensely popular feast of Saturnalia into a fete that tipped its hat to the new sheriff in town and Christ was born. Metaphorically speaking.
Everything else about Christmas – the giving of gifts, Santa, the tree, lights and candles and mistletoe, were borrowed from other cultures, most of it within the last couple of hundred years. Of course, being Americans, once we adopted those traditions we immediately declared that we’d invented them and that ours was the only way to go. And that everyone who believed anything else was wrong. Don’t agree? We’ll drop a few bombs on your ass.
But before you Christ haters start to get all smug, wipe that Grinchie-poo sneer off your face. Christmas is about more than historical facts. There’s a reason that folks wax rhapsodic about the spirit of the season. Who really cares when Christ was born, or if he was a simple Jewish carpenter with great oratorical flourish or God’s bona fide representative here on earth? It’s what Christmas really stands for that counts. Buddha, Muhammad, Gandhi; they all had good things to say and they all have their detractors and fans. Does one have to be right? Take care of each other, be kind, remember to let the people who are important to you know that they are loved. That’s the message and what difference does it make who the messenger is as long as you get it?
So today I’d like to wish each and every one of you a very, very Happy Holiday season. I sincerely hope that your Holiday’s, however you see fit to celebrate them, are merry and bright. If I haven’t told you in a while, then let me say how thankful I am to have those of you who matter most as a part of my life. As Tiny Tim said, “God Bless Us Every One.” Let it go at that and don’t start some big debate about the meaning of God. Give someone a kiss under the mistletoe and have a cocktail or two. Tis the season.
— Ric Hess, 49 days ago
Last Night in Twisted River: A Review
“Oh God – here I go again – I’m starting!” the writer thought. And so John Irving concludes his twelfth novel, Last Night in Twisted River. It’s an apt line with which to wrap things up; being an avid Irving fan (and most recently a disappointed one) I have to grudgingly acknowledge that, for many of his readers, we’re forced to agree – Yes, Thank God, he’s writing again.
I wait for a new book from John Irving the way a kid waits for Christmas morning. Most of the time when I’m between novels, and still waiting, I read his older work over and over again. But never A Son of the Circus and rarely A Widow for One Year or The Fourth Hand. Those, though professionally crafted, never attained the magic of The World According to Garp or The Cider House Rules. It’s been a long time since I felt that special, giddy mixture of elation and awe when reading Irving. In fact, I found his penultimate saga, Until I Find You, almost unreadable. I kept putting it down and had to force myself to work through it to the end. My friend, Jenny Blomgren, wrote me recently asking for advice on how to regard Until I Find You. “I really want to like this book but I just can’t” she said. Meaning, of course, I love John Irving but…? “Forget it,” I replied, “You can’t. You won’t. Go back and reread The Hotel New Hampshire.” I would never in a million years have imagined that I could write that sentence in reference to a novel by John Irving.
So when I heard that my local book store would be stocking Irving’s latest effort in late October, I had mixed emotions. Yes, it was another Irving novel, and yes, I knew I’d buy it, but what if it was another tortuous flirtation with a promise unfulfilled – something Irving could have “tossed off with his left hand” as Helen Garp once derisively admonished her husband? I didn’t want to go through that again. Thankfully, I didn’t have to.
It’s probable that dedicated (and honest) Irving fans will not find the same level of engagement with Last Night in Twisted River as they have with earlier work (I, for one, don’t think that Last Night equals the skillful message, rich characterization and dexterous plotting of Cider House). But in this latest novel, Irving approaches the love and investment that he provided to his earlier characters – the differently educated Homer Wells; the superiorly schooled and neurotically quirky TS and Jenny Garp; the ribald and raucous family Berry. These were people we cared about because it was so obvious Irving did. With Twisted River, we’re not as deeply involved with the protagonists, Dominic and Danny Baciagalupo, not quite, but they’re engaging and human and sincere. They’re certainly not as vaguely rendered as Until I Find You’s Jack Burns, or as casually imagined as the hapless Eddy O’Hare of Widow for One Year.
This father and son team are, respectively, a chef and a novelist; or at least that’s what they become. Early on they find themselves snared by a twist of unhappy fate that sends them off to a life on the lam. They spend their lives running from their past – which any reader of Irving will know is an attempt with dire consequences; there are no bills left unpaid in his stories. The Undertoad is always lurking. That’s as much a summary as any reader of Irving requires; buy the book.
There are other perks here for dedicated Irving fans; Last Night in Twisted River is a virtual tribute novel to Irving’s past works and rife with nods to Irving’s own biography. Although the author has famously said that reading fiction in order to divine facts about the writer’s life is one of the worst reasons to read a book, those who have read Irving’s biographies and interviews can’t help but follow the similarities that abound. None the least is the fact that Danny Baciagalupo ends his journey on an island in Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay, an island that was won by his old girlfriend’s grandfather in a poker game. Irving’s wife, Janet, once said that her grandfather had acquired a similar island in just that fashion. And the fact that Irving himself spends a month each summer on just such a remote retreat is about as much of a secret as Woody Allen’s performances at Michael’s Pub.
There are bears and motorcycles and wrestling. There are boarding schools in New England and the damnable consequences of lust. In many ways, these side notes are guilty pleasures, made the more so because Mr. Irving has admonished us not to look for them. But when Danny’s mentor at the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop turns up as the late, great, Kurt Vonnegut, issuing the infamous line that he thinks “capitalism will be good” to the fledgling author, what, really, does Irving expect a reader to do?
I love to read John Irving. He is, above almost every other author (and certainly more than anyone living) the person who inspired me to become a writer. In my as yet thwarted attempts to realize that dream (and the indefatigable determination that I still have to realize it) there might be found a suitable plot line for one of his novels. After Until I Find You I have to admit, I was disheartened; even our hero’s (perhaps especially those) have the greatest capacity to disappoint. But then, I rationalized, maybe the guy was just taking some well deserved time off. He had a relatively new wife, a young son, all the dough he was ever going to need. He’d already written his Magnum Opus; actually a couple of them, if such a thing were possible. If he wanted to spend the rest of his days throwing his readers tidbits while he basked in the wan Vermont sunshine, so be it. But anyone who’s ever read him knows he’s got a lot more to say, if he cares to say it. And the universe of dedicated Irving fans will grant him a ream of Jack Burns to get to one Homer Wells.
Even the least of Irving’s characters are on a quest, they’re all looking for something, as, of course, are the rest of us. And, like most of us, they rarely find what they’re looking for, or not in the manner that they first imagined that they would. That Danny Baciagalupo finally does get what he’s dreamed about for so long is heartwarming. The fact that he pays so dearly for arriving at the place where he can finally discover the grace with which to receive his blessing is what endears him to the reader; we’ve all put in our share of bleak miles, searching for our personal truths. So – not that he’s losing any sleep over my opinion – I’d like to thank Mr. Irving for this last novel. As a cook and a writer, as a restaurateur and a lover of books, I appreciate any craftsman that spends so much time and attention perfecting the details. This is good work – richly imagined, gratifying, sincere. As always, there is no fast food in the world according to John Irving, no literature lite; semi-colon’s and all, Last Night in Twisted River is a complete and satisfying meal. Thank God.
To read an earlier review of John Irving by this writer, click on this link:
Cider House
— Ric Hess, 73 days ago
Playing the Odds
Sometimes our lives take us by surprise. There are things that everyone else knows about us – that in fact they take for granted – that we stumble to as something foreign, something that we never really considered. This morning I arrived at the realization that I’m a gambler. This comes as an unexpected revelation; I don’t spend a lot of time in casinos, I don’t have a bookie, I don’t get online and contact Costa Rican betting parlors to parlay the odds on college football weekends. On the one or two occasions that I’ve lost a grand at the craps tables, I about puked. But still and all, opening my eyes to this dreary and cool October Friday in Chicago, I realized that gambling is the way I’ve run my life, ever since I walked out of my father’s house with just the clothes on my back, some thirty years ago, and set out on my own.
A few years after that, I scrimped, kowtowed and connived to open my first restaurant in Tampa, Florida; that didn’t work out so well. Then, deeply in debt, I placed my trust in an acquaintance who told me he had a surefire way to make a pile of much needed cash. Oops. There’s a reason the old saw was constructed about looking closely at things that seem too good to be true. Yes, I’m a gambler but I’d like to think I’ve learned a little since then about hedging my bets.
When the Florida chapter finally closed, I moved to Chicago. Fourteen months in, I left a perfectly good, salaried job, to go to work in a bar. My boss told me I was crazy. Four years later, I owned that bar, Sheffield’s. Now that was a good roll of the dice. We opened The Silver Cloud in ’94 – another Home Run! Then, over the course of the last six or seven years I lost, in succession, a hot dog stand in Omaha, an information services company and an import business that I’m still paying off. None of those, no matter how earnestly conceived, worked out. So what did I do? I opened another restaurant, taking out a huge chunk of equity to make it happen. It’s pretty dicey, and I’m on the hook for a big chunk of dough. But this restaurant will work, I’m sure of it. We’re in a great location, we’ve got a great space, the neighborhood is crying out for us to be there. The catch is we’ve got to be able to hang on until we click. Gamble? Maybe a little.
My friend Marcus Sakey is a talented young author with four novels published and the latest on the way. He and Sean Chercover, another friend who’s also an excellent and published novelist, were at Sheffield’s the other night. They sat in the beer garden and we shot the shit for a while. When I turned to go I realized that I wanted nothing more than to stay there with them, talking about writing and the business of writing. My buddy Craig Gore, in LA, just sold a pilot concept to Fox. We can sit and talk movies all night long. Since it’s already clear that I’m going to gamble with my future, theirs is the table I’m going to be sitting at, working until it’s my turn and the numbers fall my way.
Another legendary chestnut maintains that nothing’s certain but death and taxes. Those of us living in Chicago know all about the taxes thing. I like to think that the death part is a long way off yet, but you never know. Every day above ground is a gift.
Writing’s a journey that never ends, but the best part of life is the journey. We’re all traveling along a long, bumpy road, but it’s better to be traveling than to reach the end. So when I get impatient about the time it’s taking for the new Sheffield’s to get off the ground, or when I fret because my current novel still needs work, I have to remind myself to slow down and enjoy the ride. It’s about the process, not just the results. If you look at it that way, the results don’t seem quite so important, whether we win or lose. Just as long as we’ve got our chips in the game.
— Ric Hess, 108 days ago
To Market to Market
One of my friends in NYC, the fabulous Ms. Whitney Dorin, recently sent me a copy of Jason Epstein’s fascinating insider’s take on the future of the publishing industry: Book Business: Publishing: Past, Present and Future. Whitney’s a remarkable, extremely intelligent, young woman who you should all be lucky enough to meet one day, and she secured her already rock-fast place in my affections with her generous gift. If you’re interested in what a savvy, industry professional thinks about the future of publishing, you must read this book.
Book Business sets out with an overview of how manuscripts have traditionally been brought to market, from Gutenberg to Google, as told by a man who’s been playing the publishing game for most of his life. You get an idea of Mr. Epstein’s viewpoint in this excerpt from the Amazon.com review of his book:
As editor-publisher to some of the 20th-century’s greatest writers (Edmund Wilson, Vladimir Nabokov, Jane Jacobs) as well as the virtual inventor of the trade paperback (meaning the “quality” type, as opposed to the drugstore mass-market), Jason Epstein is one of those rare publishing-world types who is as invested in the editorial creation of a good book as in its marketing and sales. It is that dual perspective that has guided his half-century-long publishing career and that makes this compact yet expansive professional memoir such a lively, illuminating read for anyone curious how current trade publishing—basically popular general-interest fiction and nonfiction—became obsessed with a narrow pool of quickie bestsellers to the neglect of the far greater mass of slow-burners (known in the biz as “midlist”) or of the perennial sellers from years past (“backlist”). But, Epstein follows up with great enthusiasm, the time is not long before the book biz will morph into a new cyberversion of the quirky, intimate “cottage industry” that it was in its precorporate era.
Which is to say, he is not afraid for the future of the written word; far from it. What Mr. Epstein foresees is a marketplace where the industry isn’t dominated by huge, hulking publishing conglomerates who rule from distant continents. What he predicts is, largely, what the business is fast becoming – a small, nimble, niche oriented marketplace where writers cultivate quirky, individual audiences. A place where we, as authors, are responsible, in large part, for our individual success.
Because of the mergers and consolidation of publishers and the advent of the mega-stores like Barnes & Noble and Borders, quality fiction from emerging authors and, in fact, any book that’s not potentially on the springboard for mass market exploitation has an ever more difficult time finding its way to market. A traditional publisher has to invest in an inventory consisting of paper and cardboard, one which takes up space in warehouses and requires fuel and manpower to move those books to merchandisers. And then the stores that sell those cumbersome, lovely, old-school books have to devote expensive and precious floor space to their product line; if it don’t move they don’t make their sales targets. (A shout out here to the late, great William Safire who insisted that one should never start a sentence with a conjunction – sorry Bill, but I’m going to disagree with you on this one. And, since you’re there, could you do something about that stodgy, Old Testament prose?)
Now one can wail all they’d like about these unsettling transitions but that won’t affect them one iota. After all, as another, much later great, Heraclitus, once said, nothing endures but change. So what does that mean to the fledgling author who hopes to see his name, one day, in the New York Times Review of Books (a publication Mr. Epstein had a role in founding)? Well, it means, for one thing, that it’s time get your head out of your ass and start dealing with things as they are.
Most writers I know have dreams of a career that models itself in some fashion around the days of Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Paris’ Left Bank, of those storied times where dedicated and impassioned editors held their author’s hands as they poured their souls out onto the page and their heads as they poured their booze-addled guts out onto the shimmering cobblestones. Those days are gone, my friends. Get over it.
Today an author must wear many hats, and one of those is the salesman’s rakish fedora. It’s not enough, anymore, to simply be an excellent storyteller, if in fact is ever was. Today’s successful author has to be a little bit Harper Lee and a little bit P.T. Barnum. You have to make your work a product, a commodity. You have to create a body of work that people will take the time and effort to seek out and buy. If you don’t like them apples polish your bartending skills.
Yes, the times they are a changing. As a point of fact, they’ve already changed. So what does that mean, practically? Let’s start with the basics. One thing that you MUST have is a presence on the internet. You must have a polished and professional website that spells out in detail where it is you want to go with your career. You must have samples of your work there and you must update that site constantly so that you look like what you aspire to be; a professional writer.
Not to say that this site is professional but it’s been mildly effective. One of my current projects, the biography of Jeanette Esposito Braun, daughter of the late Chicago crime boos Diamond Joe Esposito, came directly from this site. You’ll notice that on my homepage, under the collaboration tab, I specifically invite others to contact me if they have a story to tell and need help in telling it. I get one or two decent leads a month from that tab (and many times that volume of garbage). Jeanette’s story is one of those that I thought were worth an investment of my time and energy and now, more than a year later, I’ve got a project that I’m really excited about. I’ll tell you more about that in future posts, but none of this would have happened without a website and a commitment to maintaining it.
Another thing you must do is attend conferences and join writers groups. You’ve got to network and talk with people in the business. You have to make your name known. Sit down today and spend a little time looking up conferences that are specific to your interests and genre (such as Bouchercon this weekend in Indianapolis, for mystery and crime writers) and then set up a calendar so that you can commit the time and resources to attend those events. Look around locally for a club or a writer’s group that you can participate in, check the Sunday paper for readings by authors coming to your town, follow the blogs of other writers that you admire; in short, do everything you can to become a member of the community of which you aspire to be a part. One thing you especially need to do is to focus. You can’t be a Science fiction, Romance, Crime, Mystery, Adventure, Literary, Great American Novel etc. author all at the same time. Pick the place that you want to be and draw a road map. You can’t get anywhere without a plan.
That’s about it for this entry; as anyone who’s been reading these pages knows, I’ve got a lot going on. It’s hard for me to take time away from my other businesses to concentrate on this blog, but it’s something I have to do. If for no other reason than to practice what I preach.
I’ll leave you today with this thought. Whitney, who I mentioned at the beginning of this entry, is the director of business development for On Demand Books, a fledgling company whose chairman is the aforementioned Jason Epstein. On Demand Books is based on the idea that a cumbersome, pre-printed inventory is a thing of publishing’s past. That a person with an interest in a specific author or book should be able to access that content at any time, conveniently and affordably, and from almost anywhere. They’ve developed a system that can deliver a high quality, paperback version of their backlist to any place that there’s the requisite machinery; stop in at Starbucks and, along with your latte, enjoy a copy of your favorite author’s latest work, quite literally hot off the press. It’s an ingenious approach and, for people like me, who covet the heft and texture of print in alternative to the electronic glow of a Kindle-esque delivery system, it’s an idea that’s intriguing. You can read about them more on their website: On Demand Books, but think about it. Any book, any time, anywhere. Sure there will be a lot of clutter to sort through, a lot you have to rise above to make your voice heard, but it’s better than the alternative. It’s certainly a more attractive prospect than row after row of Brittney Spears’ latest biography lining the shelves at the local WalMart.
Stop worrying about what might happen and start dealing with what is. You know the old prayer about courage, serenity and wisdom. Remember Heraclitus. Take a deep breath and figure out a plan for your career. Then get to work. Any way you can. Even if that means you have to publish one book at a time.
— Ric Hess, 119 days ago
The F Word
I’m a geek. I know that comes as no surprise to many of you out there, but here I am, stepping up to the plate and admitting it. And as an added bonus, this column should provide absolute proof, for those who still need convincing. I thought I’d give everyone a little ammunition for the next time we chat.
As anyone reading this knows, my business partners and I recently opened a new Sheffield’s. A restaurant with a decidedly un-Sheffield’s like vibe; polished wood, fancy light fixtures, big deal menu. It’s not what I wanted but it’s what I was given to work with and, looking on the bright side, it a beautiful space and the food rocks. The only problem is we don’t have customers. Or not enough anyway, not to sustain the overhead built into the system.
My partner, the architect, is freaking. He calls me and asks if we can write checks that he already knows we can’t and then I have to sit and listen to long silences while he sighs over the phone. It doesn’t really help but he’s worried. So am I.
Now, verging onto a seemingly unrelated tangent, I’ll also tell you that I like to walk. Not a stroll around the block but hiking kind of walks. Miles and miles. City or country it doesn’t matter, I just like to walk. I’ve always liked to spend time by myself and walking is perfect for that; slogging through those dark nights of the soul. I love walking; what I don’t like is to drive, but the new Sheffield’s is a hard eight and a half city miles from the original and there’s no alternative. So I’ve tried to mentally reach the same place in the car as I used to find on meandering, solitary treks. It’s difficult, especially when I’m waving my driving finger out the window at some idiot, but that’s beside the point. I’m attempting to find the good in the situation, the silver lining.
The way I’ve tried to reconcile the two exercises – walking and driving – is to listen to self-help tapes while I’m in the car (see I told you I was a geek). Specifically Tony Robbins. I had some of his old CD’s stored in the bottom of a closet, and so I dug them out, and then I looked him up on line and ordered the whole program. The deluxe set with updates sent right to my mailbox every month. Hey, the way I look at it, whatever works, whatever keeps me sane, is fair game. Besides, for the last twenty years I’ve looked almost exclusively to alcohol to change my reality and that’s getting old. I needed something original, or at least original to me.
The thing is; Tony’s good. I climb out of that car feeling like I can take on the world. And I’ve cut WAY back on drinking, I’m getting back into shape, I’m honing my focus. I’m not going to climb out of this hole by sinking into the bottle.
One thing that Mr. Robbins stresses is that he’s not teaching anything new. He draws on everything from Jesus to Confucius to Norman Vincent Peal. It’s all about changing the way you look at the world, the way your mind makes associations; new associations equal new patterns of behavior and, bingo, new you. He addresses that area where quantum physics meets Alan Watts meets mysticism. There is a lot of good in most of the great philosophical constructs if you can wade through the road apples.
Some critics argue that Tony Robbins and his ilk are just religion dressed up in new clothes. Well, I grew up Baptist and, let me tell you, those people are nuts. Going to a Bible thumper church as a kid was enough to sour me on religion for the next thirty odd years. But listening to Tony Robbins is a different kind of affirmation. Look, any thinking man has to have problems with the whole world was created in seven days, original sin, Jonah and the Whale line of crap, but there are a lot of seeds of truth in there. That’s what Tony preaches – although he hates it when people call what he does preaching; get the value from whatever source you choose, find the truth in the metaphor.
One of the all time big deal chestnuts of most religious thought is faith. You know, the whole if you have but the faith of a grain of mustard you can move Manhattan kind of idea. It takes a whole lot of grains to open a restaurant. But that’s what it is, right? Faith. Call it self-confidence, chutzpah, determination – if I didn’t truly believe that I could make this new venture work, I never would have started. Now the reality of the situation may very well be different, the jury’s still out, but still in light of all our difficulties, I have faith. I have to. Thanks, Tony.
Being a writer requires the same act of will, of committed belief. If I didn’t really think that I could make it, somehow, as an author, I wouldn’t be sitting here, I wouldn’t have slogged my way through Columbia College, I wouldn’t have taken on the projects I’m working on. I somehow or the other have come to the conclusion that I can make that part of my life work despite the odds. I’ve convinced myself of it. If that’s not a leap of faith I don’t know what is.
So I’m going to drive back out to River Grove and work the restaurant tonight, and I’ll probably listen to another of Tony Robbin’s CD’s on the way. I’m going to work my tail off and the tide is going to turn. You can bet on it. I’m still alive in the restaurant business after two start ups and twenty years in Chicago and I’m not going down now. But still and all, I’ve got to have faith in the process, in the idea that if I put myself out there and do the best I can the breaks will come my way.
When I was a kid, going to that little Baptist church out in the country, those good folk put a lot of emphasis on prayer. I thought it was a lot of hooey. But I think that that was just because the presentation was so unpolished and dated. If they’d been a bit more sophisticated, I might have bought more of what they were selling. And while my present entreaties to the omniscient powers that be may be likened to prayer, I am more of a subscriber to the whole God-helps-those-who-help-themselves, line of thought. Prayer, mantra or affirmation, it’s a matter of semantics. Still in all I truly believe that there’s some substance to the soft soap. You can’t do anything if you don’t believe in what you’re doing. In my book, that’s faith.
So I’m writing my books and running my restaurants and I’m going to keep on writing and running them until I win or something runs me into the ground. Even a geek can do it. All it takes is a little leap of faith.
— Ric Hess, 144 days ago
