Category Archives: Literary Endeavors

Literary Endeavors

A Million Little Pieces of Crap

Right back atcha, pal.

I’ve been writing fiction for a really long time, though not without hiatus. I occasionally go through crises of faith with it, because both market-wise and creatively, this is probably one of the worst periods for fiction in America, possibly ever. After The Baby was born, I found my worldview and my time so altered that I felt I couldn’t write it any more. I didn’t see things the way I used to, and I also lacked the acres of time needed to get into a fiction “groove”.

That’s the biggest reason why I channeled my literary ambitions into this blog, because it satisfied my desire to write and didn’t require me to lock myself in a soundproof vault for 12 hours. For a long time, fiction was such a slog for me and with so few avenues for exposure, I simply had no desire to write it any more. It was quicker and much more enjoyable to write funny ha-ha’s here.

Lately, for reasons too varied and arcane to get into here, I’ve decided to dive back into fiction. I’m working on a novel I’d all but abandoned a few years ago when it hit the 100 page mark, because I think the idea behind it is still relevant. I’m trying to power through an admittedly sub-par first draft so I can revise it and hopefully finish it some time early next year. I’ve been feeling really good about it. I’ve received lots of encouragement. I can actually see the light at the end of the tunnel.

And then I read this and felt like throwing the whole thing in the garbage. Because when the fiction world can still stomach a vile specimen like James Frey, do I really want to associate myself with it?

For those of you don’t want to read the whole article or don’t enjoy vomiting, I’ll give you the gist of it. It’s a piece in New York magazine by Suzanne Mozes about Frey, who you may remember from such frauds as A Million Little Pieces (the “memoir” that turned out to be largely made up). What’s he been up to, other than not acquiring any sense of shame? He’s established a company called Full Fathom Five.

The firm specializes in YA fiction series, on the principle that if you sit a thousand struggling, desperate writers in front of a thousand typewriters, eventually one of them will write the next Harry Potter. It is the fiction equivalent of a veal pen, and is as much of a shell game as anything Bernie Madoff ever cooked up.
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Baseball, For-Real Interviews, Literary Endeavors

For-Real Interview: Josh Wilker

cardboardgods.jpgFor several years, there was a drug store in my neighborhood with a curious trading card vending machine. Half of its contents were of the Pokemon/Yu-Gi-Oh variety. The other half were old baseball cards. The newest ones were from the late 90s, the oldest dating back to 1987. I used to pop in once in a while and buy a pack or two, and the experience was always strange. Invariably, the packs would be filled with no-names, has-beens, and never was-es, the same as they were when I was young. And yet, I’d spent so much time collecting cards as a kid, even the humblest of bench warmers brought back some kind of memory.

I had the cruel misfortune of getting into baseball just as most games were being gobbled up by cable, in a household where getting cable was an unthinkable luxury. We didn’t live close enough to NYC (or have enough disposable income) to see many games in person, either; we’d manage to get to one or two games a year, but that was the limit. Baseball cards were my closest connection to the game.

That’s why it was doubly annoying to spend the little money I did have on a pack of cards, only to get a pile of nobodies. The worst one of all: Doug Sisk. He was easily the most useless member of the 1986 Mets (and, as revealed by The Bad Guys Won, its worst human being), and yet every single pack of 1987 Topps I ever bought had at least one Doug Sisk in it. Some had two. I swear I once purchased a pack with four Doug Sisk cards in it.

I once got into a car accident because some idiot ran a red light, then tried to Gaslight me by insisting I was the one who ran a red light. I don’t think I was as mad the day this happened as I was the day I got four Doug Sisks in one pack.

Looking at cards as an adult is a far different experience. You look at the “heroes” and realize that hitting or throwing a baseball really hard doesn’t exactly make someone a hero. And you look at the quote-unquote scrubs, and you realize that these were all young men who rose to the absolute highest level of their profession, only to flatline there.

That’s my long way of saying that Josh Wilker’s Cardboard Gods spoke to me in a way that few books ever have. In it, Wilker recounts his unorthodox upbringing in 1970s Vermont in short chapters, each prefaced by a baseball card he collected as a kid, which acts as a Greek chorus to the drama unfolding in his young life.

Cardboard Gods began its life in 2006 as a blog of the same name and quickly distinguished itself from the sports blog pack with its amazing, heartfelt writing. The word “blog” seems inadequate to capture Wilker’s web site, and his book also defies description and categorization. It’s not a mere sports book, or simply a coming-of-age story, or a memoir. It is truly something I’ve never seen in print before.

I have been recommending this book to anyone who will listen, regardless of whether they are baseball fans or not. Simply put, it is one of the best things I’ve ever read. I agree 100 percent with Rob Neyer’s cover blurb: “Josh Wilker writes as beautifully about baseball and life as anyone ever has.”

It’s also one of the best designed books I’ve come across in many a moon. The dust jacket is made of a waxy paper similar to the kind that’s surrounded baseball cards for generations. The section splash pages (the book is divided into four “packs”) use family pictures done up in the style of 1980 Topps cards. And the cover promises “1 stick of bubble gum”, represented opposite the copyright page by a smashed length of crackly gum, the kind that destroyed millions of young tongues over the years (see below for why the real thing was not included).

Thumbnail image for bevacqua_77.jpgBut the real attraction remains the prose itself. For instance, he begins a chapter on the growing distance between himself and his older brother by commenting on a card of Kurt Bevacqua, a utility man best known for setting the Topps-sponsored bubble blowing record, and last seen in baseball card form occupying some Beckett-esque existential wasteland:

The last time I’d seen Kurt Bevacqua was in 1977, in a card that showed him to be adrift in a blurry, ethereal netherworld, wearing, or appearing to wear, the doctored cap and uniform of an expansion team that had yet to officially exist and for whom he would never play a single game. Behind him, the lifeless, bulldozed plain of a landfill, or perhaps a dormant spring training complex stripped of all its accessories. No batting cages, no pitching machines, no stands, no bases. All in all, Kurt Bevacqua seemed to be in the process of passing through some sort of veil separating the Big Leagues from the Great Beyond. He didn’t seem to be pleased.

“What the fuck is going on?” he seemed to be saying.

Josh was kind enough to spare some time for a few questions via email about blogging as an antidote for writer burnout, the decrepitude of post-Seaver Shea in the 70s, and booksellers’ reluctance to sell products with gum included.

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Literary Endeavors, Warm Thoughts for a Cold Winter

Warm Thoughts for a Cold Winter: City of Glass

new-york-trilogy.jpgPaul Auster is one of my favorite fiction writers. He’s also a Mets fan. The latter fact has nothing to do with the former–his work would be just as good if he liked the Red Sox, or the Rockies, or no baseball team at all. Then again, his novels are very New York, and they have a very Mets-ian cast to them, as Brandon Stosuy pointed out in this 2005 review for the Village Voice:

His hard-luck, Mets-loving characters wouldn’t work as fans of the Yankees … In Hand to Mouth, Auster admits that in his late twenties and early thirties, “everything I touched turned to failure,” including his marriage, his bank account, and his writing. That’s OK, though–his best characters are dealt the same lot and still make sure to check box scores that add up to another losing season.

Auster’s books are often about psychic torture, the longing to capture things which can not be captured, and pursuit of insane goals that can never be realized. If that’s not what it’s like to be a Mets fan, it’s damn close.

The Mets exist at the peripheries of many of his stories, mentioned in passing, usually by the narrator/main character. A reader unfamiliar with the team’s history or mythos might see these details as mere window dressing. But a Mets fan will recognize them for the touchstones they are.

My favorite examples are in City of Glass, the first book of Auster’s New York Trilogy. A man named Quinn, who writes mysteries under the pseudonym William Wilson (more on that later), gets drawn into a bizarre mystery of his own when a wrong number leads to him being hired as a private detective (despite not being one). Early in the story, he ducks into a diner to get a late night meal.

As the counterman swung into action, he spoke over his shoulder to Quinn.

“Did you see game tonight, man?”

“I missed it. Anything good to report?”

“What do you think?”

For several years, Quinn had been having the same conversation with this man, whose name he did not know. Once, when he had been in the luncheonette, they had talked about baseball, and now, each time Quinn came in, they continued to talk about it. In the winter, the talk was of trades, predictions, memories. During the season, it was always the most recent game. They were both Mets fans, and the hopelessness of the passion had created a bond between them.

The counterman shook his head. “First two times up, Kingman hits solo shots,” he said. “Boom, boom. Big mothers–all the way to the moon. Jones is pitching good for once and things don’t look too bad. It’s two to one, bottom of the ninth. Pittsburgh gets men on second and third, one out, so the Mets go to the bullpen for Allen. He walks the next guy to load them up. The mets bring the corners in for a force at home, or maybe they can get the double play if it’s hit up the middle. Pena comes up and chicken-shits a little grounder to first and the fucker goes through Kingman’s legs. Two men score, and that’s it, bye-bye New York.”

“Dave Kingman is a turd,” said Quinn, biting into his hamburger.

“But watch out for Foster,” said the counterman.

“Foster’s washed up. A has-been. A mean-faced bozo.” Quinn chewed his food carefully, feeling with his tongue for spare bits of bone. “They should ship him back to Cincinnati by express mail.”

“Yeah,” said the counterman. “But they’ll be tough. Better than last year, anyway.”

“I don’t know,” said Quinn. “It looks good on paper, but what do they really have? Stearns is always getting hurt. The have minor leaguers at second and short, and Brooks can’t keep his mind on the game. Mookie’s good, but he’s raw, and they can’t even decide who to put in right. There’s still Rusty, of course, but he’s too fat to run anymore. And as for the pitching, forget it. You and I could go over to Shea tomorrow and get hired as the two top starters.”

“Maybe I make you the manager,” said the counterman. “You could tell those fuckers where to get off.”

“You bet your bottom dollar,” said Quinn.

I scoured through Retrosheet to see if I could find this game–given the players mentioned and when the book was written, it would have to have been in 1982. Near as I can tell, Auster’s description is not of an actual game, but a conflation of any number of hideous Mets losses in the awful days of the early 80s, of which there were plenty.

(I also discovered Neil Allen was not a very good closer. In 1982, he was responsible for seven losses in relief and four blown saves for a team that didn’t have many late-inning leads to protect. He gave up three runs twice and four runs once to hand the opposition a win. Three times, he snatched victory from the hands of Mike Scott, who didn’t have many good starts when he was a Met.)

Later in the book, after a labyrinthine mystery drives Quinn insane, he finds himself in a strange apartment, trying to make sense of what’s become of his life:

…So many things were disappearing now, it was difficult to keep track of them. Quinn tried to work his way through the Mets’ lineup, position by position, but his mind was beginning to wander. The centerfielder, he remembered, was Mookie Wilson, a promising young player whose real name was William Wilson. Surely there was something interesting in that. Quinn pursued the idea for a few moments, but then abandoned it. The two William Wilsons canceled each other out, and that was all. Quinn waved good-bye to them in his mind. The Mets would finish in last place again, and no one would suffer.

I found this passage particularly chilling, as I often perform similar mental exercises to make sure my brain is sharp and I’m not insane–despite the fact that being able to recite a team’s lineup off the top of your head is a form of insanity.