I’ve stepped in the same pile of dog crap three times now. Three different days. Consecutive days. It’s becoming somewhat pitiful; all of which of course has nothing to do with anything, but there it is, and here we are. So, I’ve been writing for some time now — wrestling with words to little or no fanfare. It should be noted that doing anything repeatedly over a prolonged period of time to little or no fanfare can be somewhat discouraging. For a writer, this can take an insidious toll. My first novel, Tuesday from a ‘78 Skylark, was actually published by a legitimate publishing house. There was a book signing at a small local art gallery and a few public readings and everything! At the signing there were tiny pickles served on a plastic platter and a large box of wine that had a plastic spigot protruding from the side. I sat on a white plastic chair behind a display table; my publisher at my side. Copies of Skylark adorned the wall behind me. People milled around under soft lighting recessed into the drop-ceiling. Mose Allison played discretely from tiny speakers hidden in fake potted plants. I thought that I was on my way despite my suspicions that most of the people who turned out were there for the free wine and freakishly small pickles. My publisher, bless his soul, was happy with the turnout, regardless of the small numbers of copies that actually sold. One woman with a rather severe disposition asked me what my book was about. I had to tell her I honestly had no idea. She asked me if my book was any good. I had to tell her I honestly had no idea. She asked me why then should she buy my book. I told her she shouldn’t. She did, and asked me to write “something clever” on the inside. This is was I wrote: “I’m sorry I’m not Stephen King. Love Salman Rushdie and Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner. Lebanon, January 12th, 1974.”
She read the inscription aloud to herself then looked down at me from over her bifocals. I squirmed. Yeah. It was an awkward moment. One of many. Brutal. My publisher suggested I should perhaps interact a “little less with the people”. He joked about me being “bad for business” which of course, was not a joke at all.
After Skylark, I continued to write until I had five or six semi-completed manuscripts. Words poured from me like blood from a gunshot wound. There was no stemming the flow of half-baked plots and one-dimensional characters. I had a pretty good idea that regardless of my life’s future circumstances I would continue writing. Someone told me after reading Skylark that I should not quit my day job. I didn’t know what to make of such a bold statement. So I quite my day job.
To satisfy my need for relatively instant gratification I founded a magazine in 2004, wasting precious little time in running it into the ground after 24 issues. Its demise was acknowledged with the celebrated anthology coffee table book, The Worst of Angus Magazine Volume X. A few people bought it. There was no signing for this book. One person actually took the effort to steal a copy from a bookstore, which pleased me to no end. Since I published the anthology myself, I felt that orchestrating my own book-signing gala would just come off as lame. Plus, I couldn’t afford a box of wine. I relied on word-of-mouth sales and Facebook. I tried to Twitter but I ended up pulling a muscle in my groin and was out of commission for sixteen days. Then I wrote another novel, My Iron Lung, which didn’t sell. Now, when people ask me what I’ve been up to, I say:
“I’m still writing books that nobody reads.”
Different people react differently. Most will usually just smirk while backing away slowly. They view my candour as suspect.
Yeah. So, on September 12th, 2008 David Foster Wallace hanged himself in his kitchen in Claremont, California. ‘Infinite Jest’. He wrote it in 1994; an epic novel; its unruly structure decimating all the rules. This opus was a physically imposing behemoth. It was massive, weighing in at about forty-seven pounds, give or take a few ounces. I carried that tome around for the month it took me to get through it. Lugging Infinite Jest around was akin to a living with a hideous growth or a monstrous child. It truly was, by all accounts, an ugly piece of literature. Grotesque. Esoteric. Infinite Jest expected too much from me. It required a commitment. It required concentration. It required me to trudge on, day in and day out. I loved the book, but in the end there was no payoff. No dream sequence. No torrid sexual crescendos. A massive deflation. Damn you, David Foster Wallace. He hanged himself at the age of forty-seven. All bets are off. I suspect that it was the rabid success of Infinite Jest that ultimately did him in. And clinical depression. Notoriety and fame. But is this not the reason for which I sit in front of this monitor, typing away in splendid isolation with Frank Zappa and Nina Simone keeping me company? Fame? Notoriety? Wallace became a literary rock star, and then he hanged himself. It was like getting kicked in the face when I read the blue hypertexted Yahoo headline. But I had no one to share my grief. No one knew of Wallace in my circle, which was more of an open-ended, anti-social trapezoid. On September 12th, 2008 I began re-reading Infinite Jest. It was just as hysterically torturous the second time around, but the overt references to suicide within its covers now took on a renewed poignancy. Maybe Infinite Jest is in fact nothing more than an elaborate suicide note, published and embraced as a postmodern piece of art. So, if this is how it played out for Wallace, then I don’t have a chance. If this is the result of writing a monstrously excellent book, is it really worth it? Heavy questions.
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