Yeah, I’m a writer. I’m one of those people. I have this thing for words. I have this thing for books. It’s really quite shameless. Books. I read them. I write them. Sometimes I read them while I write them while I drive while spilling coffee, dodging potholes, shouting at clouds, smoking big fat Cuban cigars and laughing at my own jokes. Sure. I’m a big shot. I’ve been mangling the Queen’s English for a number of years – forcing words to bend to my will. But before we get too involved, let me just get some rudimentary stuff out in the open about the mechanics of this column and all subsequent columns, you know, just so there are no misunderstandings down the road. I frankly do not care much for the semi-colon. There. I’ve said it. In my experience, it’s a bit of a smug, sanctimonious big-city punctuation. And proper comma usage? Don’t get me going on that whole scene. Run-on sentences? Bring ‘em on, daddio! For me, writing is like free-form meandering jazz explorations. It’s a spontaneous exercise that can quickly become flat if I begin to contemplate paragraph breaks or faulty sentences. My writing is not high-art. With this being said, let us begin, shall we?
I like books. Big fat books. Skinny books. Square books. Flimsy books. Round books. Ripped books. Shiny books. Books with that new book smell. Books that smell like that banana you found under the couch. I like used books, old books, books with the front cover ripped off thereby making it illegal to resell. Although I love books, I’m typically more intrigued in the lives led by the authors – for me, that’s where the real stories are told. A completed book is often the end-result of years of doomed false starts and desperate nightmares of humiliating failure. Notorious drunkards – Norman Mailer, Charles Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson - angst ridden souls like the recently deceased David Foster Wallace – tragic tales and trails of self destruction, Oscar Wylde, Kurt Vonnegut, Lenny Bruce, Irvine Welsh, Anthony Burgess, Fyodor Dostoevsky. Yeah, I like books, but I love authors.
Recently I tried to start a grass-root book club from my basement, way down here in metropolitan Bangus County. I tacked up a flyer at the Post Office. People came. I screened them at the door for weapons, ill-will, and any books adorned with that ubiquitous orange Oprah Winfrey stamp of approval. I instantly became pretentious, donning my red velvet smoking jacket, and setting up the hookah pipe. Things were going pretty well in the basement. Xiang Le-Jambon, the unemployable mime I had hired to circulate with delicate cubes of cheese from Oka didn’t show, however. I subsequently found out from my newspaper delivery lady that Xiang won two-hundred bucks from a buck’s worth of Nevada tickets and hasn’t been seen since. Someone brought a box of wine that seeped from the soggy bottom. After some informal introductions we started jawing about books and authors. Things were going pretty well. It was only after a woman named Alex suggested that Stephen King could take the Marquis de Sade in a fistfight that things got heated. A woman with retro-cat glasses and formidable biceps effortlessly hoisted up a slightly built man with a patchy goatee and body slammed him onto my pool table. She then continued to manhandle him, force feeding him a handful of blue chalk cubes. One young guy took shelter in the bathroom; his weeping clearly audible from behind the closed door. I considered pleading for some semblance of sanity, but decided against it after I was struck in the neck with a tattered copy of Truman Capote’s groundbreaking true crime opus – In Cold Blood. A plant, it may have been a potted fern of some description got tipped over; a woman said something terribly cruel to Eli Huckabone, my mini-schnauzer. Book people are like that. Passionate. Visceral. Unyielding. It was only after someone tried to set fire to some curtains, that my wife came downstairs and kicked everyone out. I was shocked at how quickly things had escalated down in the basement. I then took a bubble bath with a terrific autobiography on Warren Zevon, penned by his ex-wife. After I got out of the tub my wife informed me that I couldn’t host anymore of these book club gatherings from the home.
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