WHAT IF IT ALL WORKS OUT

There was a time not too long ago when a person could make sense of the world, when we didn’t wake from a fitful night of sleep to headlines about the avian flu or execs being gunned down on the streets of midtown or reports of subway immolations, when we weren’t wary on our commutes, when we didn’t go to a store or a club or a coffee shop (or anywhere really) worried about finding ourselves in the crosshairs of an armed shooter, when our democracy wasn’t comprised, when health care wasn’t an unaffordable conundrum, when the Times didn’t report endlessly about how bad drinking is for you, when the answer to life on Earth wasn’t life on Mars, when we worked for companies we respected and in the company of colleagues we trusted[1] and in jobs that came with a measure of security and didn’t ask more than we were capable of giving, when the presentation of ourselves to the world wasn’t via a social media post but instead through physical interaction with another, when we had substantive conversations in real life (our world before acronyms), when smartphones and connectivity did not rule our lives, when people were nice, when people had manners, when people said thank you, when agents didn’t send you poison emails because they saw a hint of themselves in something you had written, when there was a degree of cordiality in your interactions with waitstaff in restaurants, when a question posed to a former colleague (how are you[2]) wouldn’t result in a long soliloquy about a book they had just acquired, when everything did not somehow come back to one’s status in the world, when collaboration with others was not interpreted as threatening, when people shopped in stores, when Sonny was alive and well and ignoring everyone who phoned him, when pronouns weren’t a thing, when you could look at a woman admiringly without fear of retribution, when people had landlines, when people answered their phones, when texting wasn’t our primary means of touch, when people had sex, when sex was electric, before everyone was exhausted all the time, before TikTok and Instagram and Threads and X and Blue Sky and Pinterest and Facebook and Linked In and Only Fans and the Dark Web, when people were searching for answers in and from books instead of on the internet, when porn was intermittently enjoyable and not about crudo, when you could enjoy a meal (or anything really) without posting about it, when we had mentors instead of influencers, when we enjoyed a measure of privacy in our lives, when you could take a colleague out for a boozy lunch and maybe saunter into a hotel to get a room, when a good day of near-drunkenness was an appropriate way to spend the afternoon, when people weren’t lording their sobriety over you, when smoking was a thing, when people did good work without complaining, when everyone wasn’t a fucking baby about this or that sentence or what he/she/they said to them, when your children were able to find their own way in the world, when the social fabric of America wasn’t so frayed, when you could have a sensible conversation about politics with your colleague or neighbor, when the news was news and Cronkite and Jennings were at the desk, when birds did not have cameras at their feeders, when schnitzel wasn’t on every fucking restaurant menu in America, when air travel wasn’t a suffocating ordeal, when publishing was more than a numbers game and less of a navel-gazing exercise, when the galas we attended were proper celebrations and not suspect in their agenda and nominations, when publishing was, in fact, agenda-less, when long friendships were the norm, when we didn’t feel adrift, confused, lost, and overwhelmed, when professional relationships weren’t exclusively transactional, when people were honest in their assessments about how they felt about their jobs and the companies they worked for[3], when we didn’t sleep with devices on our nightstands, when we actually slept through the night, before all those endless spinning wheels, when people weren’t taking Zoloft and Ativan and Lexapro and Xanax all the time, before Zoom and Slack and Teams, when we renewed subscriptions by mail, when you weren’t caught in a doom loop of chatbots while trying to cancel your mobile plan, when customer service was a thing, before Netflix and Spotify and YouTube, in the grand era of vinyl and FM radio and broadcast TV, when Elon Musk was a bratty little fucking turd, when billionaires would ask you for advice and then pay when you offered it, when we went to the movies, when a good cup of coffee didn’t cost eight bucks, when people could afford rent in New York City, when the City didn’t smell like pot and garbage, when you could make a decent living in the arts and media, and when you could find a measure of solace in the world without worrying about fires, floods, ocean plastics, and nuclear Armageddon. When you could – dare I say it – find happiness at your station in the world. I’m not sure that’s the case anymore.

Look: I spend time with people. I visit with colleagues who work in offices. They say they are happy. They tell me their lives are fulfilling. Some even post saccharine notes about their happiness on social media. I’m not sure I believe any of them. Of course, this could be a me thing. But I’m not sure it is.

I mean, life is a fucking slog. It’s a grind to make a living. Our best friends die[4]. And eventually, we run out of time. We all wake up one day thinking, “What the fuck happened to my life?” What, exactly, am I living for? What am I (are we) doing?

And so I say: enough. Enough with the anxiety, the rancor, the mean-spirited people, the struggle to get by, the Times reporting on drinking and cancer, and, well, everything we thought we knew about the pursuit of happiness. Because, after sixty-four years of life on this planet, after numerous close encounters with death, after having made it through adolescence without going to jail, after having an original play produced by the McGill Players Theatre, after having said play savaged by Maureen Peterson at the Montreal Gazette, after having a screen test with Tony Richardson and being cast in The Hotel New Hampshire, after marriage and children, after having been tapped by Sonny and enlisted to make a small contribution to one of the greatest publishing imprints of all time, after having survived dealing with Lauren Bacall[5], after having acquired and edited several books, after persuading Cormac to sit down with Oprah[6], after tamping down many a bestselling author crises including one where the author didn’t think his friend downloading child porn was a big deal, after launching a profitable business, after so many successes and failures, after all that was and all that now is, this question: when and where was I happy? When and where did I feel the greatest measure of satisfaction? Did any of it matter?

The answer, as it turns out, was two weeks ago when my tractor broke down up at my cabin, and I was able to fix it. That made me happy. Up until that moment, my greatest measure of satisfaction had been in scoring my first goal when I learned how to play hockey as an adult.

You see, I was never good with my hands in the way that more capable men are. I could never frame a house, tune an engine, dress a deer, wire a lighting fixture, patch a plumbing line, or rifle a slapshot. My hands were good for turning pages and for typing (I took a typing class in high school, and the teacher was so attractive that I never looked at the keyboard and became the fastest and most accurate typist in my class as a result). In college, I found my hands capable in other ways, and that was fine and served me well enough, but I still found myself pining to cut down tall timber with a chainsaw and fire a slapshot like Al MacInnis. I had spent enough time in the woods as a kid and watched enough hockey with my dad to know that men were not only capable of doing these things but that they could also do them with the grace of ballerinas.

I learned how to play hockey when I was forty; I purchased my tractor when I was sixty. My wife has said, “I hate to see what eighty will bring.” And so, at a relatively late age, I have learned that the measure of a life is not in the things others have come to expect from us but rather in the small things we are able to accomplish and the family and friends we are able to maintain and hold near. My professional life has been rewarding, never more so than in the business I was able to launch several years ago. But in the end, none of it has been as satisfying as, say, growing a potato in the clay-laden soil of the Adirondacks, or felling tall balsams with my chainsaw[7].

There is, too, a measure of delight in putting a sentence to paper (a good sentence). And possibly, in this year of self-care[8], there will be more of that.

Clearly, there are things to feel optimistic about. And saying that may seem like a relatively simple matter, but finding those things, for me, has been a challenge. So, what if it all works out? What if, as some have said to me, life is an intermittently joyful grind? And why not post about it if it is?

I mean, we can’t turn back the clock (as much as some of us would like to). I am not a nostalgist. I am just someone exhausted by this world.

Thank you for reading and for any thoughts you have to share.

Happy New Year.

Until next time,

Kill Your Darlings

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[1] Kind of.

[2] Years ago, at an ABA in Washington, DC, in the basement of the Shoreham Hotel, I saw a producer I hadn’t seen for a while, walked up to her, and asked this very question (“How are you?) She looked at me for a long time and, with something of an inviting gaze, said, “Wet.” These are the things that stay with you.

[3] Write to me. Tell me how you are feeling. But don’t be mean about it/anything/anyone.

[4] It is impossible for me to watch the Ravens without thinking about Johnny or the Jets without thinking about my old man.

[5] Contact Laura Zigman for more true stories.

[6] “I’ll do it for Binky and Sonny,” he finally said. Then he sat on set in a pair of cowboy boots, slouched, wondering what Augusta would make of his appearance.

[7] The trees were dead. Those that were not a threat to the cabin I left standing for the birds (without cameras adjacent).

[8] It’s a thing, self-care, and God help us all that it has become a thing for me.