What Comes Next, & How to Like It, by Abigail Thomas, writer extraordinaire!

From Abigail Thomas's book:

When trying to write a novel, she turns to her best friend (who is the loose theme throughout these stories of life, art, writing, service, family, nature, dogs, and creativity):

'It seems to me,' he e-mailed me later, 'that you start out with what you know or what you think you know and you work within those 'truthful' boundaries until you reach some sort of wilderness of not knowing, and then you find a way through until you see an end , or you find a way through until you find the end that you've already seen.  It can work either way:  running away from the truth, or running out of it.'

I love this, but fear only another writer would get it.

And from her daughter Jennifer's blog, re her behavior at the Gorgeous Sandwich Man's Shop:
'Even when there's no interest on either side, one's coordination completely disappears in the presence of beauty.'
(comma mine; excuse my anal need to copy edit!)

And on sleeping all the time:  it's 'Just the simple desire to be not living one's life.'
Whoo, do I get that!

And perhaps my favorite entry (out of many, many contenders):

'Yesterday, May first, there was too much green and pink and yellow.  There was no escaping the loveliness, the delicacy.  Beauty assaulted me on every front -- forsythia, like a breaking wave, no, a tsunami of yellow; the old magnolia exploding into pink and white, like grenades; blue sky -- there was no escape from all this beauty, I was being force-fed a spring morning, even the oxygen was divine, so finally I went inside and watched The Exorcist.'

Because beauty HURTS!  We get that in other people, but sometimes just a sunset, a moonrise, the wild riot of leaves in the fall, dragonflies flittering magically about, my lynx-like cat with eyes like pools of jade, hidden in the grass -- all of it sends me running back inside into the cave of my own making, to squint at book after book, while avoiding my own...

The best thing ever?  She's written like FIVE other books!
It's like discovering treasure.

(Call me a fan -- I've been called worse!)

Poached bit from a friend here, and a whole ton of Eve Babitz

Recently got an email from a friend whom I believe would like to remain anonymous:

"Yesterday I fell in love with an alcoholic, (he smelled like booze and was verbally slurry) and is schizophrenic, (he told me he'd been diagnosed) He was incredibly bright and engaging as well as easy on the eyes. He made me think of a first born son of a wealthy noble family who have fallen on hard times but still need to keep up the impression of their social status. I was oddly entranced. He was looking for a b'day present for his Grandma whose roots are deeply southern and religious. I ended up suggesting Ann Morrow Lindbergh's Gifts From the Sea. His taste in fiction was skewed toward outsiders like Vollman, DeLillo and David Foster Wallace. Couldn't go there with him since I've only read one Delillo and none of the other two; I hope he comes back. What is it about always feeling drawn to the wounded ones?
To be continued.....'

This reminded me so of Eve Babitz, whose book Eve's Hollywood I just finished (the cover a most appropriate and flattering pic of the author -- whose father was good friends with the Stravinskys, a musician who worked for the studios and an excellent liver of the Bohemian life) -- now you tell me if the woman above does not sound like the woman below:

Re a musician she adored when young in the late 60s:
'And there was James, salty and famished-looking from the summer, standing like a raped angel with these dark blue eyes throwing southern aristocratic landscapes all across dark smelly nightclubs where we sat in front of the impossible.'

(And no -- while the woman above let me have <u>Eve's Hollywood</u> first, she hasn't ever read her before).

In highschool she runs off with a different crowd (ie, one uncompromising iconoclast of a rebel boy, Aces) and the next Mr. Popular asks if she's going to the dance:
"No, I said, my eyes narrowing.  So it turned out that power was the quality of knowing what you liked.  What an odd thing for power to be.

Re her crush on Brando rendering her unable to follow the crowd to UCLA, and her parents' reaction ('they both thought universities were where people went who didn't know what they were doing').
'Sometimes she [her mother] would look at me happily, so I suppose she did not regard with alarm the fact that I was so [Brando'd] out that I was the verge of doubling up on everything to stop it from seeming like half.'

'Andy Warhol's having a party, I'd turn over delicately. The evening lay naked before us.  We could go anywhere or do anything; it was New York City.'

Well hell I'd never in a thousand years think Eve Babitz wouldn't understand that town's essence! Regardless her single year NYC, she remains a staunchly in love with L.A. and always makes it sound like so much more fun that I ever had there...maybe if I'd met her!

Here is Ms. B speaking of taking LSD at a party:

'The dawn came up, the sun rose in unendurable horizons of peach from which I could not take my eyes. All lay in beauty beneath the round orange sun and sweetness filled the air like a lake feels to a fish.

By then, even my English friend was sleeping. And so I watched alone. Two plus two equals pink.
For me, sometimes.'

Oh my goddess, for me, too, Eve -- as much as possible!

'All at once I was home writing. I stopped going out and met no one; my only friends were my perpetual girl friends and I didn't fuck anyone new.

Eve, welcome to my world.

Just don't leave it. Ever.

Okay?

And there you have it:

the inner censor!

(makes no sense now, but when I 'lifted' those words, they came out as white bars only)

I am clearly the queen of tech!

Lifted from these pages...

'...and the attention felt natural, even to me, though we'd rarely gotten it before. That was the thing about attention when it finally came: it never seemed amazing. It felt, if anything, maybe just a little LATE.'

(And you are redeemed; as you must learn to redeem yourself)


And that beautiful, beautiful poem: 

'O Western wind, when wilt thou blow/
That the small rain down can rain?/
Christ, that my love were in my arms/
And I in my bed again!'

From Don Lee's The Collective

From Don Lee’s The Collective:

‘Aristotle called it melancholia, the pre-disposition artists have for depression, prone as they are to being morose and antisocial and self-flagellating and megalomaniacal.  Indeed, without that inclination, no one would probably become an artist in the first place.’

While I recognize all those traits inside myself, the curious truth is that I don't act morose (except when I am, which, actually, when you think about it...in any case, try to stay away from people then), and very rarely anti-social; in fact, especially when I was younger, I had a near-frenetic need for joie de vivre and could not bear to be alone (nor could I bear to be with imbeciles and ninnies – consequently, my treasure hoard of brilliant, funny people is better than most).

Here is the character of Joshua considering suicide:

‘...he had no reason to do it and yet he had every reason.  He had never married, never had children, never even lived with anyone.  He had chosen to steer clear of any distractions or obligations that might interfere with his writing.  He was willing, nay, eager, he said, to make whatever forfeitures were necessary in the pursuit of art.  This was what you had to do if you wanted to be a real writer, he said, if you wanted to strive for greatness, for perfection.  You had to be dedicated.  You had to sacrifice.’

What I felt most deeply were Eric’s relationships with women, the way he was with them and the way they treated him – it was wholly believable, and truly poignant.

Another part that struck ore of true:

‘This was the lesson I’d learned about being friends with artists:  at first, you were honest in your critiques, just like you had been in grad school.  But when you were honest, you’d find it would cause days, weeks of tension and bruised feelings, a rift that would sometimes never fully mend.  You learned what artists really wanted from their friends.  It wasn’t honesty, it wasn’t constructive criticism, it wasn’t the truth.  They’d get the truth soon enough, from dealers, editors, directors, agents, grant-makers, foundations, critics and the public.  What artists really wanted from their friends was simply support, and encouragement, and, if it wasn’t too much of an imposition, unconditional adoration.  About works in progress, they wanted you to tell them:  It’s perfect.  You don’t need to change a thing.  It’s good to go.  About works that had already been released to the world, fait accompli, they wanted you to tell them:  It’s brilliant.  You’re brilliant.  I love it.  I love you.  What was the point of saying anything else?  Yet, this did not prevent us from disparaging our friends’ work behind their backs.’

’They were complete neophytes, and they were good-humored and ebullient about it.  They wrote terrible, cloddish stories and they loved everything that was presented.  They wanted the writers’ group to be supportive and fun, not confrontational – an exercise in boosterism for dabblers and tenderfoots.  They were too busy to read the ms ahead of time, preferring to listen to them in toto the night of the meetings, and they didn’t care for the formality of penning commentary or marginalia.  It was all impromptu, the pronouncements slapdash and facile.  They had nary a criticism for the opening to my novella.  The sessions in the living room were bush league, amateur hour.  The writers’ group was a waste of my time, without utility or challenge.  Until the 3^rd Thursday night, when Esther Xing read her story to us.’

Gotta say, that's a brilliant set-up.

Don Lee is intelligent without being off-putting, he knows himself very well, and is that rare thing: a man vulnerable among women.  Maybe I'm projecting, but I found the character's need to love and be loved almost painful in its urgency; time is passing, it's so fleeting, oh my God (why am I looking at my wrist, as if it had the watch of mortality upon it?) it is, in fact, almost over!

I'll read anything this man writes.