Do you have any family story to share with us all?
What's your most impressive family history story?
I have a feeling that some people have really amazing stories in their family, and I want to hear them.
Have you ever stumbled upon a dark family secret?
Have you found out something about your family that was completely unexpected? How did you handle the revelations?
My 'cool' family story is that my great-great-great-grandfather served the 2nd longest in the civil war without dying.
One thing you learn real quick is that nobody in your immediate circle will care at all about your writing or your books. I once spent 35 dollars to print out my book at Staples so that a friend could read it. She left it at her mother's house for a month, then claimed that it had roach eggs in it, and that she couldn't retrieve it.
I told my mother that I wrote a book, fully expecting her to ask to read it. She didn't. In fact, she just kept on gossiping about her sisters or whatever.
I was engaged a couple of years ago, and my book sat on the corner dresser for two years unopened by my ex. She never even moved it to dust, but worked around it. Which, upon further reflection, I should have noted--was a sign that the relationship was going nowhere.
Realize that most people just don't ever read books. They are not readers, and working through a novel is painful to most of them.
You only want readers to read your books. They are your target audience. Not mom or dad or Aunt Sally. They aren't going to give a damn.
And you shouldn't give a damn what THEY think, anyway.
What story does your family always tell about you?
Let me tell you another family story over the next few days - this time about my father. A Brooklyn boy from a working-class neighborhood. A man who lost his beloved mother when he was thirteen - he came back from playing ball in the street to find her dead in the family kitchen of an embolism (she was just forty years old). Someone not close to his father who was a commodore in the US Navy, a strict military man, always distant, always away from home. My Dad joined the US Marines at the age of seventeen with six friends. They ended up fighting the Japanese on Okinawa. He was the only one of the seven friends who came back alive.
He went to university wanting to become a doctor. He flunked chemistry his first year. He changed over to Economics. He got a job in a bank. He met my mother. And I have already hinted at the rest of the story. It was a marriage that produced three sons, of which I was the eldest, and a great deal of unhappiness - and I say all this without rancor or anger. Just a lingering sadness that they were so unable to find some sort of peace within themselves. Or to leave a relationship that they both knew was toxic.
In 1996, when I was forty-one years old and my dad was almost seventy, after years of publishing books and articles and one novel, a big windfall had come my way. My second novel, “The Big Picture”, had been the subject of one of those crazed publishing auctions that were common in the back half of the 1990s, and which had given me enough money to buy a house outright in a leafy corner of South London. For my father he didn’t exactly exalt in the news that his writer son - who’d been having a very interesting, but not exactly lucrative career - had suddenly known financial success on a level that had always eluded him. Especially as my father had walked out on a high level job in the mid-1980s and never found his way back into the metals business, thereby missing one of the biggest bull markets in history. Somewhere in the early 1990s he was put in charge of an organization called The Copper Club - a largely administrative job, planning lunches and testimonial dinners, and being given an annual trip to London to attend the big annual Metals Exchange dinner there every October. And though bills just about got paid, the truth was: he and my mother were running up debt.
On the evening in question my father - who had just turned seventy - insisted or a celebratory boys-night-out Manhattan dinner to toast my publishing deal. I suggested somewhere modest, knowing that my father was never someone who easily embraced the world of epicurean (and I too had struggled for far too long to be comfortable with the idea of $200 per head on a big deal dinner… and I’m still not at ease with such extravagances). But that evening Dad insisted on bringing me to a French joint in the East 60s where the prices were absurd.
When I told him, after an initial perusal of the menu, that I wanted to pick up the tab he said:
“You try to do that and I’ll break your fucking hand”.
“Point taken. I’m your guest tonight”.
We ordered vodka martinis, straight up, twist of lemon, extra dry. The martinis were served in glasses big enough to house a medium-sized goldfish, The bartender, in true Manhattan style, really did know how to make the sort of arctic vodka martinis that act as liquid anesthetic and provide instant temporary balm against life’s manifold injustices.
So naturally we had to have another one each.
It was halfway during this second depth charge that my father made reference to just turning seventy and time accelerating like a high speed train on the road to oblivion.
“The way I see it, if I’m lucky I’ve got a good fifteen years ahead of me” he said.
“That’s still a considerable amount of time” I said. “I mean, so much can happen in fifteen years”.
“So speaks the forty-one-year-old - with half his life still in front of him. Maybe even more, considering how too fucking long everyone lives on both sides of the family”.
“You can still do huge amount with fifteen years, Dad”.
“Like what?”
“Like living the way you want to live. If you could rewrite things tomorrow, where would you live? And how?"
My father drained his second martini, then began to speak. As he outlined the ideal life he could envisage for himself, I could see him eyes radiant, almost brimming, as he told me about the house he wanted to buy in Maine. Not a grand house. Something reasonable, manageable, preferably in a village, with a water view. He told me he was always scouting Maine magazines like ‘Down East’, looking at the real estate listings (this was pre-internet days), and could easily find quite the typical white clapboard New England house on a bay or a cove for around one hundred thousand dollars. And he’d buy himself the Jeep he always wanted, and most of all, the sailboat - a small yawl was the type he always envisaged - that he’d have docked nearby.
“Maybe I could find some local community college where I could teach International Business or something like that. And I’d really like to learn to sail properly. Maybe even find myself a girlfriend...”
Considered now, I think it was the moment I loved my father the most. Because I could see the sadness and vulnerability so lurking within, along with the profound desire to reinvent himself anew in the time left to him.
More coming up tomorrow...
Sensing that, for one of the first times in our relationship, my father was asking his eldest son for counsel I gripped his arm across the table and said:
“But you know this is all very feasible. You have... what... one hundred, one hundred fifty thousand dollars worth of debt?”
“Something like that”.
And the apartment’s worth about one-point-two million, right? Well, after the realtor takes his or her cut and you pay down the debt, you’d have something like one million profit. Give Mom two-thirds of that. She’ll be able to buy a nice two bedroom apartment in the east seventies for around three-fifty, and would have close to three hundred grand to put away. With your three-fifty, you could easily buy the Maine house, the jeep, the yawl, and still be able to bank two hundred grand. I have contacts in Maine. Of course you’d be able to find an adjunct post at some community college teaching business, which would bring in some income. And, trust me, you will find some lovely woman over fifty who will be delighted to be called your squeeze. It’s all possible, Dad. You just have to...”
That’s when he slapped the palm of his hand against the table, his eyes suddenly wild with rage.
“How dare you...” he hissed. “How fucking dare you...”
“Hang on, I was only expanding on that which you...”
He suddenly grasped the fingers of my right hand and began to twist them towards the knuckles.
“Want me to break your fucking hand, writer? Is that what the big all-knowing novelist wants?”
My father, even as he entered his eighth decade, was a ferociously strong and imposing man: six-foot-two inches tall, weighing in at over two hundred and fifty pounds. He always intimidated me when I was younger. Truth be told he still did well into my early forties. And when I tried to wriggle free he pushed my fingers even further towards the breaking point.
“You are hurting me” I said.
“That’s the fucking point” he said - and I could see that those two triple-dosed martinis had triggered another of those rage moments towards which he was so prone when smashed.
“I apologize if I’ve upset you”.
I had long known by this juncture that when my father was in one of his most extreme, belligerent moments, an expression of regret on my part - even if I thought it completely unmerited - was the ‘open-sesame’ moment that would deflate his rage. Tragically my father always needed to be right. Even if - in the wake of one of these outbursts (an outburst that cost him his last major executive post) - he regretted his behavior (as I know he so often did), there was that belligerent unloved little boy still omnipresent who (as one of my brothers sagely noted) threw all his toys out of the crib when vexed. And who had to impose his control over you and remind you who was in charge. Especially if he felt cornered by a question he couldn’t bear to face. The fact that, from the outset, he was so insistent on picking up the bill that night... here too was sad evidence of his discomfort with my windfall; that I had just earned a sum of significant money that, had he not walked out in anger on his last serious job, would have probably come his way.
All these considerations about the subtext behind this incident arrived later. For the moment I was simply concerned with sparing myself several broken fingers and defusing the situation. So I rendered the apology. Immediately he let go of my fingers, but still tightly gripped my arm as he said:
“I took an oath” he whispered. “An oath in front of God. I said I’d stay with your mother until death parts us. Got that? Understand that?”
“Got that, Dad” I said. “And how about letting go of my arm, please”.
“Don’t you ever talk fantasies like that again. Understood?”
“Understood”.
And as I looked up at my father what I saw in his eyes at this given moment wasn't rage or fury. It was pure, unalloyed fear.
I have a feeling that some people have really amazing stories in their family, and I want to hear them.
Have you ever stumbled upon a dark family secret?
Have you found out something about your family that was completely unexpected? How did you handle the revelations?
My 'cool' family story is that my great-great-great-grandfather served the 2nd longest in the civil war without dying.
One thing you learn real quick is that nobody in your immediate circle will care at all about your writing or your books. I once spent 35 dollars to print out my book at Staples so that a friend could read it. She left it at her mother's house for a month, then claimed that it had roach eggs in it, and that she couldn't retrieve it.
I told my mother that I wrote a book, fully expecting her to ask to read it. She didn't. In fact, she just kept on gossiping about her sisters or whatever.
I was engaged a couple of years ago, and my book sat on the corner dresser for two years unopened by my ex. She never even moved it to dust, but worked around it. Which, upon further reflection, I should have noted--was a sign that the relationship was going nowhere.
Realize that most people just don't ever read books. They are not readers, and working through a novel is painful to most of them.
You only want readers to read your books. They are your target audience. Not mom or dad or Aunt Sally. They aren't going to give a damn.
And you shouldn't give a damn what THEY think, anyway.
What story does your family always tell about you?
Let me tell you another family story over the next few days - this time about my father. A Brooklyn boy from a working-class neighborhood. A man who lost his beloved mother when he was thirteen - he came back from playing ball in the street to find her dead in the family kitchen of an embolism (she was just forty years old). Someone not close to his father who was a commodore in the US Navy, a strict military man, always distant, always away from home. My Dad joined the US Marines at the age of seventeen with six friends. They ended up fighting the Japanese on Okinawa. He was the only one of the seven friends who came back alive.
He went to university wanting to become a doctor. He flunked chemistry his first year. He changed over to Economics. He got a job in a bank. He met my mother. And I have already hinted at the rest of the story. It was a marriage that produced three sons, of which I was the eldest, and a great deal of unhappiness - and I say all this without rancor or anger. Just a lingering sadness that they were so unable to find some sort of peace within themselves. Or to leave a relationship that they both knew was toxic.
In 1996, when I was forty-one years old and my dad was almost seventy, after years of publishing books and articles and one novel, a big windfall had come my way. My second novel, “The Big Picture”, had been the subject of one of those crazed publishing auctions that were common in the back half of the 1990s, and which had given me enough money to buy a house outright in a leafy corner of South London. For my father he didn’t exactly exalt in the news that his writer son - who’d been having a very interesting, but not exactly lucrative career - had suddenly known financial success on a level that had always eluded him. Especially as my father had walked out on a high level job in the mid-1980s and never found his way back into the metals business, thereby missing one of the biggest bull markets in history. Somewhere in the early 1990s he was put in charge of an organization called The Copper Club - a largely administrative job, planning lunches and testimonial dinners, and being given an annual trip to London to attend the big annual Metals Exchange dinner there every October. And though bills just about got paid, the truth was: he and my mother were running up debt.
On the evening in question my father - who had just turned seventy - insisted or a celebratory boys-night-out Manhattan dinner to toast my publishing deal. I suggested somewhere modest, knowing that my father was never someone who easily embraced the world of epicurean (and I too had struggled for far too long to be comfortable with the idea of $200 per head on a big deal dinner… and I’m still not at ease with such extravagances). But that evening Dad insisted on bringing me to a French joint in the East 60s where the prices were absurd.
When I told him, after an initial perusal of the menu, that I wanted to pick up the tab he said:
“You try to do that and I’ll break your fucking hand”.
“Point taken. I’m your guest tonight”.
We ordered vodka martinis, straight up, twist of lemon, extra dry. The martinis were served in glasses big enough to house a medium-sized goldfish, The bartender, in true Manhattan style, really did know how to make the sort of arctic vodka martinis that act as liquid anesthetic and provide instant temporary balm against life’s manifold injustices.
So naturally we had to have another one each.
It was halfway during this second depth charge that my father made reference to just turning seventy and time accelerating like a high speed train on the road to oblivion.
“The way I see it, if I’m lucky I’ve got a good fifteen years ahead of me” he said.
“That’s still a considerable amount of time” I said. “I mean, so much can happen in fifteen years”.
“So speaks the forty-one-year-old - with half his life still in front of him. Maybe even more, considering how too fucking long everyone lives on both sides of the family”.
“You can still do huge amount with fifteen years, Dad”.
“Like what?”
“Like living the way you want to live. If you could rewrite things tomorrow, where would you live? And how?"
My father drained his second martini, then began to speak. As he outlined the ideal life he could envisage for himself, I could see him eyes radiant, almost brimming, as he told me about the house he wanted to buy in Maine. Not a grand house. Something reasonable, manageable, preferably in a village, with a water view. He told me he was always scouting Maine magazines like ‘Down East’, looking at the real estate listings (this was pre-internet days), and could easily find quite the typical white clapboard New England house on a bay or a cove for around one hundred thousand dollars. And he’d buy himself the Jeep he always wanted, and most of all, the sailboat - a small yawl was the type he always envisaged - that he’d have docked nearby.
“Maybe I could find some local community college where I could teach International Business or something like that. And I’d really like to learn to sail properly. Maybe even find myself a girlfriend...”
Considered now, I think it was the moment I loved my father the most. Because I could see the sadness and vulnerability so lurking within, along with the profound desire to reinvent himself anew in the time left to him.
More coming up tomorrow...
Sensing that, for one of the first times in our relationship, my father was asking his eldest son for counsel I gripped his arm across the table and said:
“But you know this is all very feasible. You have... what... one hundred, one hundred fifty thousand dollars worth of debt?”
“Something like that”.
And the apartment’s worth about one-point-two million, right? Well, after the realtor takes his or her cut and you pay down the debt, you’d have something like one million profit. Give Mom two-thirds of that. She’ll be able to buy a nice two bedroom apartment in the east seventies for around three-fifty, and would have close to three hundred grand to put away. With your three-fifty, you could easily buy the Maine house, the jeep, the yawl, and still be able to bank two hundred grand. I have contacts in Maine. Of course you’d be able to find an adjunct post at some community college teaching business, which would bring in some income. And, trust me, you will find some lovely woman over fifty who will be delighted to be called your squeeze. It’s all possible, Dad. You just have to...”
That’s when he slapped the palm of his hand against the table, his eyes suddenly wild with rage.
“How dare you...” he hissed. “How fucking dare you...”
“Hang on, I was only expanding on that which you...”
He suddenly grasped the fingers of my right hand and began to twist them towards the knuckles.
“Want me to break your fucking hand, writer? Is that what the big all-knowing novelist wants?”
My father, even as he entered his eighth decade, was a ferociously strong and imposing man: six-foot-two inches tall, weighing in at over two hundred and fifty pounds. He always intimidated me when I was younger. Truth be told he still did well into my early forties. And when I tried to wriggle free he pushed my fingers even further towards the breaking point.
“You are hurting me” I said.
“That’s the fucking point” he said - and I could see that those two triple-dosed martinis had triggered another of those rage moments towards which he was so prone when smashed.
“I apologize if I’ve upset you”.
I had long known by this juncture that when my father was in one of his most extreme, belligerent moments, an expression of regret on my part - even if I thought it completely unmerited - was the ‘open-sesame’ moment that would deflate his rage. Tragically my father always needed to be right. Even if - in the wake of one of these outbursts (an outburst that cost him his last major executive post) - he regretted his behavior (as I know he so often did), there was that belligerent unloved little boy still omnipresent who (as one of my brothers sagely noted) threw all his toys out of the crib when vexed. And who had to impose his control over you and remind you who was in charge. Especially if he felt cornered by a question he couldn’t bear to face. The fact that, from the outset, he was so insistent on picking up the bill that night... here too was sad evidence of his discomfort with my windfall; that I had just earned a sum of significant money that, had he not walked out in anger on his last serious job, would have probably come his way.
All these considerations about the subtext behind this incident arrived later. For the moment I was simply concerned with sparing myself several broken fingers and defusing the situation. So I rendered the apology. Immediately he let go of my fingers, but still tightly gripped my arm as he said:
“I took an oath” he whispered. “An oath in front of God. I said I’d stay with your mother until death parts us. Got that? Understand that?”
“Got that, Dad” I said. “And how about letting go of my arm, please”.
“Don’t you ever talk fantasies like that again. Understood?”
“Understood”.
And as I looked up at my father what I saw in his eyes at this given moment wasn't rage or fury. It was pure, unalloyed fear.
