HARD TIME

(a disquisition on trouble and on racing a mile past the line)

I have a friend who went to prison for five years (he wasn’t a publisher, by the way). The circumstances of his incarceration are not that important – it was a drug rap in an era when those often resulted in hard time. He served at Plymouth County Correctional, which, despite their Wiki, was (is) not the most genteel of correctional institutions. Getting folks to open up about their time inside is not an easy thing to do because there’s pain and trauma involved. It’s like getting people to open up about their experience as soldiers during wartime (my dad never did, other than to say he slept on the porch for a long time when he came home). That never stopped me from being curious about his experience, or my friend’s. For the latter, I suppose my curiosity was fortified by a friend who was a prison guard at Dannemora for most of his life.

***

What goes on inside those walls?

Nothing good.

Is it, like, movie bad?

Worse.

How so?

Most of what these men know is violence. And they act accordingly.

***

Cole would tell me stories about fights where inmates were left to bleed out in the yard. That sounded bad. Like someone was breaking the law bad.

***

Isn’t that illegal?

What?

Leaving someone to bleed out in the yard.

Help always comes. BEAT. But you’re right, no one’s in a hurry.

You said some die there.

Some do.

Prisoners have rights.

There’s a bend towards injustice inside the yard.

***

The other night, my friend and I were out drinking, and he started talking about his life in prison and the roads that led him there. Without a prompt. He talked about what went down that resulted in his going to Plymouth, about the crew he ran with, about the pressures brought to bear on him by the criminal justice system, about the rat finks, about the trial, about his time inside and the people he lost and the ones who gave up on him. I didn’t know him when he was running with that crew. So, getting him to open up about it was a big deal. It was always going to be his story to tell.

***

I have regrets.

We all have regrets.

It wasn’t great, that life.

Doesn’t sound great.

But it wasn’t as bad as it sounds, either. BEAT. I broke the law. I did my time.

It’s good you made it back.

BEAT. The thing that hurt the most was losing my gal.

I’m sure.

But the time away was good for me. Everyone needs time alone in the world.

***

There was, for me, a lot to unpack in that statement. It got me thinking about my dad, who spent most of his time alone. My friend, I know, is a better man for having spent time away. He changed. His views of the world softened. My dad’s views, for all his time alone, did not. His calcified. He remained a prisoner of the life he had made for himself long after my mother died.

When my mother was alive, she would say being married to Harry was hard. “He’s not great company, your father.” I could see how he wasn’t. That didn’t dim my affection for him. It did make me wonder about their relationship.

***

Harry became a prolific writer of letters after my mother died. He wrote to me every week. He would report on his walks to the town dock, his tenure as an altar boy elder, his dinners at Bill’s Harbor Inn, his failing investments and crooked stockbroker, his gals (there were, at the outset, a few of them), later suggesting there were riches available to him should he decide to marry again. But, largely, his days were devoid of activities other than walking, going to church, reading books, intermittently dating, and watching soap operas. Soon, he ditched the soap operas and the gals and only read. He was, I think, the best-read borrower in the history of the Port Washington Public Library. And so, when I called my dad to share some news, I was a little taken aback by his response.

***

I got the job at Morrow.

You’ll never be rich.

Dad.

It’s my view, son.

But I’ll be doing something I love.

You should’ve stuck it out at Merrill.

I hated it there.

You never gave it a chance. You could’ve worked out the kinks. Finance is a good future.

Finance strikes me as a criminal enterprise.

They have good lawyers at those firms.

You hated your job, Dad. You were angry every day of your working life. I don’t want that to happen to me. BEAT. Also, you’re not rich.

And I’m fucking miserable because of it.

***

Harry then went on to brag to the pastor at St. Peter of Alcantara and Jack (of Jack’s Stationary fame, the Port Washington newsstand) and the “hens” in his apartment building that his son was a big wig in New York publishing every time he saw my name in the paper. He would trot copies of the papers over to the librarians across the street, holding the papers in his hands and jabbing his finger at the articles in question.

My name started being in the paper more when Sonny hired me. I was a comms guy working at Knopf. There was stuff to report. When reporters called with questions, I answered them. This was during an era (the 1990s) when many publishing colleagues would not answer queries from reporters. This has remained something of an industry constant. No comment.

I had some tussles with the press over the years. I loved sparring with D.T. Max when he was at the Observer. Max was old school, had an edge to him. Now he's writing long, thoughtful pieces for the New Yorker. And books about Sondheim and David Foster Wallace. He strikes me as someone who had a little anger and found a way to let go.

Kirkpatrick at the Times was another reporter with an edge. Always liked to tee up industry conflict and play out the internecine battles between editors and publishers. It was a good time to be a beat reporter in publishing. There was a lot to report on. We had spirited personalities running around New York doing lines at the Odeon. Editors were fucking agents, agents were fucking publishers, and everyone was making bank.

There was Moss at Seven Days, Nelson at Inside, Andersen and Carter at Spy. It’s hard not to miss those days. Reporters kept you on your toes.

***

Dad used to call me at the office when he saw my name in the paper. This is back in the era when people called you at the office. He called one day and then stopped calling for a while.

***

Is my fucking son there, he said to my assistant.

My assistant pops her head in the door.

It’s your dad. BEAT. He sounds, um, angry.

I picked up the phone.

What’s up, Dad? You scared my assistant. Jeezus.

Is it true?

Is what true?

Are you publishing that two-timing piece of shit, Clinton?

Yes. BEAT. It’s a big deal, Dad—a major acquisition for Sonny.

You’re no son of mine.

It’s not like I’m voting for him.

It is to me.

***

And then he hung up. We didn’t speak for a long time after that.

My dad never let go of his anger at the world. I think it kept him alive (he lived to be one hundred). I often think about his anger in relation to my own.

Eventually, we resumed our conversations. A lot of them were about books. He loved mysteries and thrillers and read everything we published - Crichton, Ellroy, Hall, Hiaasen, Fesperman, PD James, Larsson, LeCarre, Leonard, Nesbo, Smith, Vachss, etc. – his EZ Boy in the apartment surrounded by stacks of them.

When I think about the problems of our industry, I think we need more people like Harry. He read all the time. Books were his companions. He preferred the company of books to the company of people. So, more people who are angry, more people who are miserable, more people who find themselves alone in the world. The problems of trade publishing, solved (that’s for the many who have written to me suggesting I need to offer solutions to problems, not just identify them). I can’t. Please don’t expect anything like that here. Mostly, this is a space for trying to process the world.

Harry was a Newsday man – he hated that “commie liberal fucking rag” New York Times (everyone take a breath here, this is not a rant against the Times) – and when I consider the circles of my life, it’s amazing to me that I am working with one of the great Newsday men of all time, and have been, for several decades. Despite what some may think, I did not inherit my father’s biases against the New York Times. I’m a reader and subscriber. I work with a lot of reporters over there, but my last post pissed off some colleagues when I suggested the Times was a diminished entity in terms of the results it has been driving in the marketplace. This is true of every fucking media outlet in the world. No one is happy about this news. It’s not a rap on the people who work at the paper or a knock on the reporting they do (though I did think their Britney coverage was excessive). But who gives a shit what I think?

Publishers look at the Times as a fair beacon of book reporting. It is. The books team is a good team, staffed with good people. But they can’t cover every book. So, if you’re a writer in the world, or someone who does what I do for a living, you have to look beyond the Times. Enough said.  

***

I was talking to a reporter at The Wall Street Journal recently, and they told me that their reporting is now being metered in a significant way. Yup, measured for clicks. This can’t be good for books.

***

A friend is someone you call when you’re in trouble. But a friend is also someone who calls you when you’re in trouble. And in some instances, you’ll hear from someone who isn’t a friend, but then you realize, after their call or email, that maybe they are a friend, because they were not afraid to pick up the phone or send you an email suggesting that something you wrote didn’t just cross a line but instead “raced a mile past it.” We are often blind to our indiscretions.

***

All I know is that the work we are doing is getting harder and I’m not getting any younger and if you are reading this and being honest, you feel that way too.

***

Who would want to be a writer these days?

More people than you think.

I don’t understand it.

I was at a conference some years ago.  There was a panel where writers were discussing their publishing journeys. During the Q&A, someone from the audience walked up to one of the microphones and said, “Given the difficulties some of you have encountered as writers – I mean, you’ve all talked about how hard it is to make a living and how challenging it is to reach readers, I wonder why some of you write at all. So just a response to that, please.” And, you know, two of the authors went long in their responses, talking about how important it is to keep at it, that there are many examples of writers whose books did not sell for a long time until one eventually did, the career-defining work, as it were, when the time in results in a huge payout (Cormac, Ish) and that, for a writer, it’s important to keep your nose down and not lose sight of why you went down this road in the first place, and to remain appreciative of everyone connected to your work – the publishers, the booksellers, the librarians, the media colleagues – and that, even when books don’t sell the way you want or publishers expect, there are still connections made with readers, and that, in the end, is why we write. For them. Then, the last writer on the panel, who had been listening intently to his colleagues, says, “I write to meet chicks.” That’s it. Nothing else.

Oh my god.

I was like, that’s the most honest answer ever. I mean, this guy was a tail chaser from way back and tapped more ass than any writer I’ve ever met.

If you can’t get paid, might as well get laid!

***

It’s a mistake for writers to conflate their authorial worth with sales or the number of women they bed. Of course, publishers do this all the time. They look at track. They make an assessment. If the sales are subpar, they shoot you (not really, but it feels that way if you’re an author). This is what keeps writers up at night – the fear of being gunned down by data.

Sonny always said to trust the read and not the track. It led us to publish some books others might not have taken a chance on. I’m not running a publishing company, but his wisdom strikes me as sound. Here’s a story for you (to be continued)…

Until next time,

KILL YOUR DARLINGS