If you write a play and nobody does it, are you still a playwright?

My head cold has now become my head-and-chest cold; my sleep bursts are briefer than microprocessor functions, my dreams all have fever logic and dwell on me being trapped in my day job, and the proposed five-part novel has a pretty complete first part done. So naturally I'm thinking about starting something else, and getting frantic about dumping the novel to write a play that I can send out to all the year-end reading/competition/workshop places because, y'know, it ain't February unless I get a dozen rejection letters in the space of five days. And it ain't March, April, May or June unless I'm in a total funk because of February's rejection letters.

What I'll probably end up doing is sending out Monkey's Uncle to about half a dozen things in the next week or two. But only if I can do it and not care what happens. Y'know, like investing in the stock market. If I'm going to be checking the mail every day like an investor checking a stock price, and freaking out every time it goes down a penny, then forget it. I have to send the play out like it's found money.

This has been a weird year for me. I have not written a single play this year, which hasn't happened in a long time. I've made notes for the one I was working on last year this time, but the spark's not there (or maybe the deadline's not there--I work so much better with a deadline). And what's taken the spark's place is a mix of frustration, desperation, and a hefty chip on my shoulder. Stuff I need to clean out of my system because it usually makes me say things like "Oh yeah? I'll give you something to reject!" and then do something really stupid and self-destructive. And do I know self-destructive.

So I took the year off. Have I cleaned myself out? Yes and no. The "I'll show you!" voice is still there, but I'm not listening to it as much. The "you'll never get another play produced ever" voice is there too, and getting louder. But there's a new voice which keeps saying "You're stuck in a rut and you need to change some things," and that's the one I'm trying to talk with more and more. If I can just shut up those other guys. And not do something stupid.

I am thinking of writing a Christmas play, though. The only hitch is, I have to do it while I'm working on the next seven chapters of Three Dead Slaves.

Oh yeah. And not do something stupid.

Weekend Update

Nothing much happened this weekend (cough) Red Sox (cough). But seriously. When the best team in baseball wins the World Series, how surprising is that?
Yeah, yeah--I know. The surprise isn't that the best team won; the surprise is who the best team is. And why is it a surprise? Because we're all still thinking that these are last century's Red Sox.
In the old days, if the Sox were behind in a seven game series by 3 games to 1, Red Sox fans everywhere would prepare themselves for defeat. If the Sox had a 6-0 lead that suddenly became a 6-5 lead, we would prepare ourselves for the game to end as a 7-6 or even 20-6 loss. We would prepare ourselves for the worst. What we don't know how to do? What we've never had to do till now? Is prepare for the best.
And the best is what this young century's team is giving us. The old Sox found new ways to lose. These guys find new ways to win. When a 6-0 game turns into a 6-5 game, they come back and score three insurance runs. A cancer survivor who has three stolen bases all year steals third and scores on a sacrifice fly. A pinch hitter swings at the only pitch he's ever seen in this World Series and homers what turns out to be the winning run in the final game. I'm sorry. I'm not used to that.
But I can get used to it real fast. Oh yeah. As long as I don't turn into a Yankee fan and start expecting it. If that happens, you know who you are and you know what you can do to me, so do it, because I'll deserve it.
And speaking of the Evil Empire--how classless was it of Scott Boras to announce that Triple-A Rod is opting out of his Yankees contract while the game last night was STILL BEING PLAYED? That's like interrupting your ex-girlfriend's wedding when the priest says " . . .let him speak now or forever hold his peace" by yelling out "Yeah, well, I'm getting married next week--to somebody I met in a laundromat, okay?--so there!"
It's the same old Yankee mentality: they have to be the center of attention, or else they don't exist. They have to be in the spotlight, even when they're off to the side of the stage somewhere. I know, I know--it wasn't the Yankees who did this, it was Boras. So either he's got their disease or they've got his disease, but either way, it's the same all-about-me mentality.

And speaking of all about me.

Roger?










Listen to your wife.

not something you see every day

Memes in Mudville

So now that the Rockies-win-streak story is deader than Viva Laughlin, what's the operative meme for this World Series?

1. Don't count your chickens. As Tom Boswell points out, "Three times a team has won Game 1 by 10 runs, the '59 White Sox, '82 Brewers and '96 Braves. All lost the Series."

2. When it's not the end of the world, it doesn't end. This is an offshoot of the Manny being Manny meme, and is perfectly and succinctly explained here.

3. AL = The Show, NL = AA. "Great pitching beats great hitting" should officially be retired in favor of "AL trumps NL" or "AL pwns NL."


4. 2004 Redux. Down by 3-0 in '04 against the Yankees, the Sox came back to win four straight and then swept the Series. Down by 3-1 in '07, the Sox come back and win three straight and now have a 2-0 lead in the Series. Nobody wants to say it out loud, so I won't. I figure the Rockies will take Game 3. But if they don't? There's only one meme left.

5. If the Red Sox can do it, how hard can it be? To which the only response is: if the Red Sox can do it twice, how special is that?

Smells Like Sox Spirit

I looked up "Statement" in the dictionary when I got to work this morning, and there was a picture of Dustin Pedroia hitting a home run in the first inning of last night's World Series game. So I'm guessing we're not going to hear a lot about how many games the Rockies have won in a row during tonight's game. Unless Tim McCarver says something like "You have to score runs to win games, and the Rockies know this." Or "It's the teams who come back to win, who win it all."
I don't know if it was the 8-day delay or what, but the Rockies looked totally out of their league, like a bunch of Revolutionary War soldiers with flintlocks suddenly coming face to face with a Thompson submachine gun. Every one of them had this dazed WTF/Get me out of here/This has gotta be a bad dream stare on his face. And meanwhile Beckett, chewing gum, chewed them up like they were grass and he was the lawnmower.


Because the Sox were celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Impossible Year team, Carl Yastrzemski was at Fenway; he threw out the first pitch, which Fox only showed in a brief replay because they had to cram thirty minutes of commercials into the 40-minute pre-game show. Whenever I watch a Fox-broadcast baseball game, I think back to the 2004 World Series. A reporter asked Stephen King, "Why did you bring a book to a baseball game?" and King said, "Because it's on Fox. I'll have plenty of time to read."

And speaking of commercials? I'd totally take the lap dog if Dragon Tattoo girl was part of the deal:

Let's call it 43 Best Books for now

-- that way we can shoehorn a poetry collection and a translation into the mix, okay? Okay.

I'm sure I'll think of more, so this isn't final (I'm still reaching for 100). And I'm not going to rank them, just list them, with five exceptions:

Catch-22, by Joseph Heller. This gets my vote as #1.

Collected Poems/Selected Poems, by WH Auden. This is a tie for #2, so it takes up two slots. You have to get both, because there's stuff in Selected (like "September 1, 1939") that's not in Collected. Don't ask.

Trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnameable) by Samuel Beckett. #4. I'm counting this as one novel instead of three separate novels because it's my list, so it's my rules.

The Public Burning by Robert Coover. #5.

Here's the other 38 in no particular order:

HERZOG by Saul Bellow
THE QUIET AMERICAN by Graham Greene
THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain
THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
1984 by George Orwell
LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
ALL THE KING'S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote
CAT'S CRADLE by Kurt Vonnegut
NAKED LUNCH by William S. Burroughs
THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH by Norton Juster
THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett
WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys
WHITE NOISE by Don DeLillo
THE DEPTFORD TRILOGY by Robertson Davies
THE ROBBER BRIDE by Margaret Atwood
BLOOD MERIDIAN by Cormac McCarthy
I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS by Flann O'Brien
THE CREAM OF THE JEST by James Branch Cabell
THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD by John le Carrè
BURR by Gore Vidal
THE BELL JAR by Sylvia Plath
THE BIG SLEEP by Raymond Chandler
HERLAND, THE YELLOW WALL-PAPER AND SELECTED WRITINGS by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER by William Styron
JOY IN THE MORNING by PG Wodehouse
THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG by Norman Mailer
THE PAINTED BIRD by Jerzy Kozinski
RED HARVEST by Dashiell Hammett
THE GREEK PASSION by Nikos Kazantzakis
THE GOLDEN SPUR by Dawn Powell
THE HEARTS AND LIVES OF MEN by Fay Weldon
MATING by Norman Rush
ANY HUMAN HEART by William Boyd

Well Read? Or Just Well Educated?

The Modern Library has just published its list of 100 best novels. Between the ones I read on my own (red) and the ones I had to read (green--thank you, Jesuits!), I get a 50. (Well, 49 1/2 really--I never actually finished Finnegan's Wake.) And not a Henry James in the bunch. But please: Henderson the Rain King over Herzog? The Naked and the Dead over The Executioner's Song? (Okay--technically non-fiction, which is why In Cold Blood is missing.) And where's Burr by Gore Vidal? Or The Public Burning? Or Robertson Davies? Am I going to have to come up with my own list here? (Duh.)


1. ULYSSES by James Joyce
2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
6. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
7. CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
8. DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler
9. SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
11. UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
12. THE WAY OF ALL FLESH by Samuel Butler
13. 1984 by George Orwell
14. I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
15. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
16. AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
17. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
19. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
20. NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
21. HENDERSON THE RAIN KING by Saul Bellow
22. APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by John O'Hara
23. U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos
24. WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson
25. A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster
26. THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James
27. THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
28. TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. THE STUDS LONIGAN TRILOGY by James T. Farrell
30. THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
32. THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James
33. SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser
34. A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh
35. AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
36. ALL THE KING'S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
37. THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder
38. HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster
39. GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin
40. THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
42. DELIVERANCE by James Dickey
43. A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME (series) by Anthony Powell
44. POINT COUNTER POINT by Aldous Huxley
45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
46. THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad
47. NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad
48. THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence
49. WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
50. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
51. THE NAKED AND THE DEAD by Norman Mailer
52. PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth
53. PALE FIRE by Vladimir Nabokov
54. LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
55. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
56. THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett
57. PARADE'S END by Ford Madox Ford
58. THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton
59. ZULEIKA DOBSON by Max Beerbohm
60. THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
61. DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather
62. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY by James Jones
63. THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLES by John Cheever
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
65. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
66. OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
67. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
68. MAIN STREET by Sinclair Lewis
69. THE HOUSE OF MIRTH by Edith Wharton
70. THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET by Lawrence Durell
71. A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA by Richard Hughes
72. A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS by V.S. Naipaul
73. THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West
74. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
75. SCOOP by Evelyn Waugh
76. THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark
77. FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
78. KIM by Rudyard Kipling
79. A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E.M. Forster
80. BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
81. THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH by Saul Bellow
82. ANGLE OF REPOSE by Wallace Stegner
83. A BEND IN THE RIVER by V.S. Naipaul
84. THE DEATH OF THE HEART by Elizabeth Bowen
85. LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad
86. RAGTIME by E.L. Doctorow
87. THE OLD WIVES' TALE by Arnold Bennett
88. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
89. LOVING by Henry Green
90. MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie
91. TOBACCO ROAD by Erskine Caldwell
92. IRONWEED by William Kennedy
93. THE MAGUS by John Fowles
94. WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys
95. UNDER THE NET by Iris Murdoch
96. SOPHIE'S CHOICE by William Styron
97. THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
98. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain
99. THE GINGER MAN by J.P. Donleavy
100. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by Booth Tarkington

Places in New York that my ghost will haunt . . .

I've been going to one particular spot on the west side of the Sheep Meadow in Central Park since I moved here.


You go in via the southwest entrance across from Tavern On The Green, walk up the dirt path that slowly disappears into grass, and just past the trees on your right is a low hill. On top of the hill is an outcropping of rock (if the Sheep Meadow was the Pacific, this would be Hawaii).

I usually park myself on the slope in front of the rock. In the 25+ years I've been doing this, I have never failed to find a spot to lay out, no matter how crowded the place is. Maybe everybody knows it's my parking space. Maybe the rock is radioactive. Maybe that explains the baldness and the headaches.

But this is where I come every Memorial Day weekend to start the summer off right by catching some rays; this is where I end up on July Sundays and Saturdays (usually after a movie); and this is where my ghost will lie, flat on its back and listening to a CD, as it turns from pale white to slightly freckled to tanned.

If my ghost is going to haunt any place on a weekend in the 22nd century, it'll be here.

Weekend Update

Vampires Baby Vampires. Are you over Anne Rice? Are you tired of romance novels where the only decent human being a girl can find to date is a vampire? Are you sick of movies that put the sucker in bloodsucker? Then go see 30 Days of Night. No Byronic whiners here; the bad guys are evil incarnate, and they're all Russkis, some of them with gang tattoos. If this movie had been made 60 years ago, critics would have called it a Cold War allegory. The operative world being cold. Creepy, scary, and much better than the comic book it's based on.

Gone Baby Gone. Good really good. Could have been better (during which rewrite did "Angie Gennaro's character" become "Patrick Kenzie's appendage?") but the moral dilemma of the book is intact, even if compressing the convoluted plot into two hours results in a final 20 minutes that make your head spin. If you've read the book, you won't be disappointed. If you haven't read the book, this'll make you want to. And if you've never been to Dahchestah, this is just as good as going there.

Sox Baby Sox. Okay -- Matsuzaka only gave up 2 runs, not 4, and Ortiz' "little guys" didn't start jumping until my nails were bitten down to the second knuckle, but you know the Fates are on your side when infield singles take weird hops, umpires call opposing baserunners out when replays show they were safe, and opposing third-base coaches make inexplicable errors in judgment with the game on the line. The question now is: which team are the Fates going to be french-kissing for the next two weeks?

Nail-Biting in Mudville

It's 2 in the afternoon and I just saw Gone Baby Gone (more Boston authenticity in the first five minutes than The Departed had in 2 plus hours) and at the tail-end of the credit roll, Ben Affleck thanks Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, probably just for being themselves. They weren't themselves last night, but thanks to JD Drew they didn't have to be.

Tonight however is a different story.

This may come back to haunt me, but here's my prediction for Game 7 against the Indians. Matsuzaka is going to give up 4 or 5 runs. It's what he does. If the Sox can score 6 or 7 runs, they'll win. If they can't, they'll lose. And it won't be pretty.

Do I wish they'd saved five of last night's runs for tonight? You bet.

Do I hope they'll jump all over Westbrook in the first couple of innings? Oh yeah.

Do I think the Sox will win tonight? Yes.