Mentor: A Memoir (18 page)
Authors: Tom Grimes
And I sat there, wishing I could believe him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
F
ive days after I sold the novel, Jim Gammon called me. The Met Theatre, he said, would reopen in May, which was only four months away. After listening to a staged reading of
Spec
, the board wanted to mount it as the theater’s premiere production.
ive days after I sold the novel, Jim Gammon called me. The Met Theatre, he said, would reopen in May, which was only four months away. After listening to a staged reading of
Spec
, the board wanted to mount it as the theater’s premiere production.
The speed of events seemed surreal. A decade had passed since the night I’d accidentally discovered (or at least began to shape) my literary voice. I’d begun to search for it while enrolled in a freshman composition class at Queensborough Community College. I read
The Sun Also Rises
and wanted to be Hemingway. Naively, I also wanted to be Jake Barnes, a journalist, and the novel’s narrator. He rose late, showered leisurely, then drank coffee and read the daily paper at a Paris café. After a long lunch, he’d “go upstairs and get off some cables.” In the office, he “worked hard for two hours.” Once he’d typed his articles, he “sorted out the carbons, stamped on a by-line, put the stuff in a couple of big manila envelopes and rang for a boy to take them to the Gare St. Lazare.” Then he went “to the Café Napolitain to have an
aperitif
and watch the evening crowd on the Boulevard.” The only problem was, I’d romanticized Jake’s life so completely that, until my professor pointed out this fact in class, I didn’t realize Jake was impotent. Still, I wanted to be a writer, and Hemingway’s memoir,
A Moveable Feast
, validated my fantasy about how I could become one. I would move to Paris, live in a charming attic, and each morning I would carry a notebook to the Place Saint-Michel, where I would find “a pleasant café, warm and clean and friendly” and order a café au lait. Once the waiter brought it, I would lift my pencil and press its sharp tip against one of my notebook’s empty pages. At first, I struggled with the prose. But soon I found that “the story was writing itself and I was having a hard time keeping up with it.” So I skipped lunch and ordered a rum St. James. Then “I went back to writing and I entered far into the story and was lost in it. I was writing it now and it was not writing itself and I did not look up nor know anything about the time” until “the story was finished and I was very tired.” After lifting my head, “I closed up the story in the notebook and put it in my inside pocket and asked the waiter for a dozen
portuagaises
and a half carafe of the dry white wine they had there.” At dusk, as the streetlights came on, “I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day.”
The Sun Also Rises
and wanted to be Hemingway. Naively, I also wanted to be Jake Barnes, a journalist, and the novel’s narrator. He rose late, showered leisurely, then drank coffee and read the daily paper at a Paris café. After a long lunch, he’d “go upstairs and get off some cables.” In the office, he “worked hard for two hours.” Once he’d typed his articles, he “sorted out the carbons, stamped on a by-line, put the stuff in a couple of big manila envelopes and rang for a boy to take them to the Gare St. Lazare.” Then he went “to the Café Napolitain to have an
aperitif
and watch the evening crowd on the Boulevard.” The only problem was, I’d romanticized Jake’s life so completely that, until my professor pointed out this fact in class, I didn’t realize Jake was impotent. Still, I wanted to be a writer, and Hemingway’s memoir,
A Moveable Feast
, validated my fantasy about how I could become one. I would move to Paris, live in a charming attic, and each morning I would carry a notebook to the Place Saint-Michel, where I would find “a pleasant café, warm and clean and friendly” and order a café au lait. Once the waiter brought it, I would lift my pencil and press its sharp tip against one of my notebook’s empty pages. At first, I struggled with the prose. But soon I found that “the story was writing itself and I was having a hard time keeping up with it.” So I skipped lunch and ordered a rum St. James. Then “I went back to writing and I entered far into the story and was lost in it. I was writing it now and it was not writing itself and I did not look up nor know anything about the time” until “the story was finished and I was very tired.” After lifting my head, “I closed up the story in the notebook and put it in my inside pocket and asked the waiter for a dozen
portuagaises
and a half carafe of the dry white wine they had there.” At dusk, as the streetlights came on, “I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day.”
Only I didn’t go to Paris. I stayed in Queens and worked as a funeral parlor’s janitor to put myself through college. By my sophomore year I began to call myself a writer. At first, I wrote poorly in a plain, direct style; then I wrote poorly in a self-indulgent, complicated style. But, slowly, I improved. Using cheap paper and purplish-black ribbon that stained my fingers whenever I changed the spools, I pecked out manuscripts, each as tall as a layer cake. I hid embarrassing sentences behind a hedgerow of xxxxxx’s, or else I smeared them with Wite-Out until they disappeared beneath a crust of hardened goo. When I moved to Manhattan and found a day job, I woke at 4:00 AM to write for three hours, often dozing despite drinking several cups of tea. For years, no one published my work. I received unsigned rejection letters in envelopes I’d addressed to myself. My stories seemed to operate according to the laws of a boomerang. I’d fling one into space, and a few months later it would return. Now, within days, people told me they wanted my work. I seemed to be leading someone else’s life. Frank called it “the impostor syndrome.”
“You can’t believe good things are happening to you and you’re worried someone will find out you’re a fake,” he said. “Don’t worry, it’ll pass.”
So I said okay to Jim Gammon. Several weeks later, in February, a squib appeared in
Variety
: “A group of stars are reviving Hollywood’s Met Theatre, which has been dark for five years. The board includes Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, Beth Henley, Arliss Howard, and Holly Hunter. The first planned play is
Spec
, a comedy about a frustrated scripter penned by Tom Grimes, who is turning into a hot property as well. His novel,
Sweet Illusions of the Game
, will be published by Little, Brown.”
Variety
: “A group of stars are reviving Hollywood’s Met Theatre, which has been dark for five years. The board includes Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, Beth Henley, Arliss Howard, and Holly Hunter. The first planned play is
Spec
, a comedy about a frustrated scripter penned by Tom Grimes, who is turning into a hot property as well. His novel,
Sweet Illusions of the Game
, will be published by Little, Brown.”
I felt more confused than elated. “This is weird,” I said to Frank.
He answered, “Hey, enjoy the ride while it lasts.”
After Eric had told me I couldn’t change publishers, I resigned myself to remaining with Little, Brown. I scanned my bookshelves and looked for its logo. The company had published Mailer, Salinger, and Pynchon, who, twelve months earlier, had released his first novel in seventeen years. Not bad. Plus, Pat Mulcahy’s presence comforted me. As the novel’s in-house advocate, she maintained everyone’s enthusiasm for the book—the editorial board, the sales force, the marketing division, and the PR people. Even before she’d edited the book, she’d convinced them to print three dozen “Cape Cods,” which are expensive advance reader copies sent to famous authors for jacket quotes. Chain-store sales executives and respected independent booksellers received them, too, as a sign that the publisher planned to promote the book aggressively. A year before the finished product would be snugly placed on a shelf—ideally showing the front cover, not simply the book’s spine—or, if Little, Brown paid for the premium space, on the table every customer saw the instant he stepped into the bookstore, the buzz started.
But my novel didn’t have a title. Amend that: my novel did not have a good title. Initially, Little, Brown used the manuscript’s final six words and entitled the novel
The Sweet Illusions of the Game
. To me, it sounded syrupy. “Titles are hard,” Frank said. “They have to imply everything and reveal nothing.” So we sat in his office and stared at the frozen river, aware that Fitzgerald’s original title for
The Great Gatsby
was “Trimalchio of West Egg.” That Hemingway’s
The Sun Also Rises
left his typewriter entitled “Fiesta.” And that Pynchon’s
Gravity’s Rainbow
emerged from its literary chrysalis entitled “Mindless Pleasures.” We began in earnest, but came up with nothing. So we pondered our titular abyss for perhaps a week before we began to leave notes in each other’s workshop mailboxes. The spontaneous and unspoken rule of the game was to suggest the worst title imaginable. I’m no longer sure who dreamt up
The Great Batsby
, but Frank contributed
Across the Infield and Into the Showers
, I hold the copyright on
The Fastball Also Rises
, he gets credit for
The Mound and the Fury
, and I take the blame for
The Satanic Bases
. One cold night I went to a Paul Simon concert and a song lyric attached itself to my brain the way a barnacle adheres to the hull of a ship. The next day, by pure coincidence, Frank and I approached each other on a deserted, downtown street. With our woolen scarves wrapped around our faces and the two of us nearly deafened by the wind, we paused beneath the illuminated bank sign that displayed the time and the temperature. Briefly, I lowered my scarf and yelled, “
Forever Blessed
!” Frank shouted back, “Great!” Then he pointed at the numerals overhead. It was fourteen degrees below zero. Without saying another word we scurried in opposite directions. At home the tiny icicles that clung to my beard melted. With my tongue, I snatched drops of water from my mustache the way a lizard snares flying insects. As I wiped my face with a dish towel the telephone rang. When I answered Frank said, “It sounds like a bodice ripper.” I pictured a swooning duchess having her white blouse torn open by a duke wearing platform shoes and a powdered wig. A week later, I heard two words:
Season’s End
. They signaled the end of youth and innocence. And, as my narrator believed liberalism died the day we elected Ronald Reagan president of the United States, the new title’s resonance captured my protagonist’s nostalgia and disillusionment. In sequence I called Frank, Jody, Charlie, and Connie. In response I heard, great, exactly, perfect, and terrific. The book had its title.
The Sweet Illusions of the Game
. To me, it sounded syrupy. “Titles are hard,” Frank said. “They have to imply everything and reveal nothing.” So we sat in his office and stared at the frozen river, aware that Fitzgerald’s original title for
The Great Gatsby
was “Trimalchio of West Egg.” That Hemingway’s
The Sun Also Rises
left his typewriter entitled “Fiesta.” And that Pynchon’s
Gravity’s Rainbow
emerged from its literary chrysalis entitled “Mindless Pleasures.” We began in earnest, but came up with nothing. So we pondered our titular abyss for perhaps a week before we began to leave notes in each other’s workshop mailboxes. The spontaneous and unspoken rule of the game was to suggest the worst title imaginable. I’m no longer sure who dreamt up
The Great Batsby
, but Frank contributed
Across the Infield and Into the Showers
, I hold the copyright on
The Fastball Also Rises
, he gets credit for
The Mound and the Fury
, and I take the blame for
The Satanic Bases
. One cold night I went to a Paul Simon concert and a song lyric attached itself to my brain the way a barnacle adheres to the hull of a ship. The next day, by pure coincidence, Frank and I approached each other on a deserted, downtown street. With our woolen scarves wrapped around our faces and the two of us nearly deafened by the wind, we paused beneath the illuminated bank sign that displayed the time and the temperature. Briefly, I lowered my scarf and yelled, “
Forever Blessed
!” Frank shouted back, “Great!” Then he pointed at the numerals overhead. It was fourteen degrees below zero. Without saying another word we scurried in opposite directions. At home the tiny icicles that clung to my beard melted. With my tongue, I snatched drops of water from my mustache the way a lizard snares flying insects. As I wiped my face with a dish towel the telephone rang. When I answered Frank said, “It sounds like a bodice ripper.” I pictured a swooning duchess having her white blouse torn open by a duke wearing platform shoes and a powdered wig. A week later, I heard two words:
Season’s End
. They signaled the end of youth and innocence. And, as my narrator believed liberalism died the day we elected Ronald Reagan president of the United States, the new title’s resonance captured my protagonist’s nostalgia and disillusionment. In sequence I called Frank, Jody, Charlie, and Connie. In response I heard, great, exactly, perfect, and terrific. The book had its title.
Eric said to me, “We’ll do everything we can to make this book a best seller.”
“And he means it,” Frank assured me.
As Pat edited the novel, February and March passed. In early April, her comments arrived. I read them and showed them to Jody and to Charlie. Then I carried the seven, single-spaced typed pages to Frank’s house, where we sat shoulder to shoulder at his dining room table and went over them. Despite Frank’s intense enthusiasm for
Season’s End
, this was the first time we had scrutinized the text word by word. During the two workshops I’d taken with him, his input had been minimal. Once, beside a simile, he’d written in faint gray script, “Superb.” But he had never questioned the narrator’s voice, or quibbled with my prose. Instead, his impressions were macroscopic. One day, he said, “The relationship between Mr. Percy and Mike has a Faustian quality. Mike’s soul is at stake, even if he doesn’t entirely understand this. But the reader will.” He studied Pat’s comments. Then he said, “These are good. She’s smart.” We debated which suggestions to accept, which to ponder, and which to reject. “Mike never seems to have much fun,” Pat had written. “Loosen him up.” (Later, I tried to, but the effort felt forced, and the addition interrupted the flow of the book. “Delete it,” Frank said. “Ignore the suggestion.” I did.) Pat continued, “And this paragraph at the end of chapter seven: it’s very Joycean and beautiful, but it kind of makes me gag. Cut it?” “Should I?” Frank shrugged. “Hey, it’s your book.” I kept the paragraph. That’s what Frank did: he allowed me, for better or worse, to write the novel I was able, and needed, to write. At the end of April, I mailed the manuscript’s final draft to Pat. For my last workshop as a student at Iowa, I submitted her favorite chapter and my classmates spent twenty minutes discussing how two characters were positioned on a bed. The conversation was silly. Yet the voices I’d once fought to silence would soon be forever silenced, and I would miss them.
Season’s End
, this was the first time we had scrutinized the text word by word. During the two workshops I’d taken with him, his input had been minimal. Once, beside a simile, he’d written in faint gray script, “Superb.” But he had never questioned the narrator’s voice, or quibbled with my prose. Instead, his impressions were macroscopic. One day, he said, “The relationship between Mr. Percy and Mike has a Faustian quality. Mike’s soul is at stake, even if he doesn’t entirely understand this. But the reader will.” He studied Pat’s comments. Then he said, “These are good. She’s smart.” We debated which suggestions to accept, which to ponder, and which to reject. “Mike never seems to have much fun,” Pat had written. “Loosen him up.” (Later, I tried to, but the effort felt forced, and the addition interrupted the flow of the book. “Delete it,” Frank said. “Ignore the suggestion.” I did.) Pat continued, “And this paragraph at the end of chapter seven: it’s very Joycean and beautiful, but it kind of makes me gag. Cut it?” “Should I?” Frank shrugged. “Hey, it’s your book.” I kept the paragraph. That’s what Frank did: he allowed me, for better or worse, to write the novel I was able, and needed, to write. At the end of April, I mailed the manuscript’s final draft to Pat. For my last workshop as a student at Iowa, I submitted her favorite chapter and my classmates spent twenty minutes discussing how two characters were positioned on a bed. The conversation was silly. Yet the voices I’d once fought to silence would soon be forever silenced, and I would miss them.
After class I told Marilynne that I wouldn’t be back.
“Oh?” she said, softly, like a pigeon cooing.
“I have to be in LA,” I said. “My play opens in May and rehearsals have started.”
Marilynne seemed surprised. I suppose she expected a more conventional excuse. Or perhaps my mysterious success puzzled her. I know she didn’t like my novel. But I’ll never know if she spoke about it with Frank, or with Roger Straus, who had published her novel
Housekeeping
. So I said good-bye, and then—just like Frank leaving school in
Stop-Time
—“I turned from the window, walked down the hall and went out the door. It was as simple as that. I disregarded the pounding of my heart.”
Housekeeping
. So I said good-bye, and then—just like Frank leaving school in
Stop-Time
—“I turned from the window, walked down the hall and went out the door. It was as simple as that. I disregarded the pounding of my heart.”
Rehearsals ran from three in the afternoon until midnight. Afterward, most of the cast and crew sat backstage, drinking and talking. I never got to bed before 2:00 AM, and when I slid out of it the next morning and parted the thick green drapes to let in the sunshine the first thing I saw was Al Pacino as “The Godfather” staring at me from a thirty-foot-high billboard. He wore a brown three-piece suit and a light gray fedora, and he appeared ready to tell me I’d disappointed him. Nearby, on the scrubby hillside, stood white, twenty-foot-tall letters that read HOLLYWOOD. Seeing the word every day demystified it, and changed its meaning. Rather than being grandiose, the sign seemed timid and apprehensive, as if the place it represented was so unreal it needed to remind itself, and convince others, that it existed. Soon, I began to meet film agents who believed I could earn millions penning screenplays based on the fact that they’d
heard
I could write. They were desperate to sign me because I’d accomplished nothing. They’d discovered me in a cocoon and imagined me as a butterfly, and they would love the illusion of me until I produced my first failure. After that, they would never want to speak to me again.
heard
I could write. They were desperate to sign me because I’d accomplished nothing. They’d discovered me in a cocoon and imagined me as a butterfly, and they would love the illusion of me until I produced my first failure. After that, they would never want to speak to me again.
A week before
Spec
opened, Eric called and said, “You’re not going to want to hear this, but Pat’s leaving Little, Brown next month.” Before I could speak, he added, “Don’t panic. She wants to take four authors with her and you’re one of them.”
Spec
opened, Eric called and said, “You’re not going to want to hear this, but Pat’s leaving Little, Brown next month.” Before I could speak, he added, “Don’t panic. She wants to take four authors with her and you’re one of them.”
Pat had been offered the founding literary editor’s position at Hyperion, a new publishing house started by Disney. As I held the receiver, I pictured FSG’s logo on my book’s faux-linen spine and understood that it had become a fantasy.
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