Hemingway Raising Hell

Reading Hemingway's Boat makes you cringe. Its about his years during the thirties hanging out in the Keys and Cuba and fishing and shooting sharks with a Tommy Gun and throwing grenades and drinking just about everything he can get his hands on. Its about the way he cheated on Pauline his second wife with Martha  his third wife and the way he argued with Pauline hours before she died and then dumped Martha for Mary his fourth wife. Then he really got going.

Mary took abuse that was almost on the level of a slave. Hemingway hit her. He called her a slut and just about anything else he could think of. He brought in whores and drank with her and her mother and then had sex with the whores. He brought a twenty one year old girl to stay at his house who he wanted to marry. He wrote letters threatening reviewers. He abused his publisher. He ignored his kids. He kept fishing and drinking and hanging out in Cuba, bragging about his fantastic Marlin catches. He got older.

And the older he got the worse he became. Paranoia nipping at the corners he saw enemies all around him. He continued drinking and abusing his wife and just about anybody else who was around him. He lived like a King with sycophants filling in and doing all the shit work while he wrote and fished and drank and cavorted and spewed. Really it is amazing because he had to be the supreme asshole of all time and this is what makes writers squirm because there is a little bit of Hemingway in every writer.

Maybe it is the pressure. Maybe it is the mind twisting contortion  of writing. Thinking you are never good enough or writing enough or successful enough. And these things plagued Hemingway with real psychosis that eventually drove him to kill himself. But before he did he raised hell in the way many writers before him have and still do.

Maybe he just did it a little better...or maybe he set the bar.

www.billhazelgrove.com
 

The Confessions of an Ex Cable News Junkie

Hello my name is Bill, I am a cable news junkie. Recovering. I fell off the wagon a year ago and started watching hours and hours of cable news beginning with Keith Olbermann, then Rachel Maddow, then Chris Matthews, then Lawrence O'Donnell. Some nights I watched three hours of straight talk with the same topics regurgitated on every show but I didn't care. Hell, I was such a junkie I switched to Fox and watched The Factor and Sean Hannity during commercial breaks. Talk about addicted.

But I am back on the wagon and I have gone cold turkey. I have to say it has not been hard this time around. I don't know what happened, but suddenly I just didnt' care. I just couldn't buy off on Rachel's impassioned carefully researched, fully felt, emphatically delivered diatribes on why don't ask don't tell should be abolished and why it wasnt' happening. Maybe it is because it did happen and when she announced it on her show in a town hall meeting everyone clapped FOR HER like she was the President who had just accomplished getting rid of the policy!

Or maybe it was Keith Olbermann who I really dug and would watch sometimes two or three times a night! I just couldnt' get enough. But then I started to realize there were never any guests from the other side. And how many times can he have Eugene on from the Washington Post in his super hip glasses? Or the little guy from The Nation who stands in for him? Or Howard from Newsweek then the Huffington Post in his scarf and hipster long hair? It just began to feel regurgitated with his question at the beginning: How many of these stories will you be talking about tomorrow? Um, really none of them.

Or  Chris Matthews yelling at everyone and letting no one finish. Or Lawrence O'Donnell with his quirky sense of humor and his government experience allowing himself to get the last word. Or even Anderson Cooper keeping them honest with his white hair and dwarfish good looks. Don't get me wrong. I could easily fall off the wagon and go back to my old ways of watching three straight hours a night, but I think what is different this time is I started to wonder what else I could be doing with that time! And that's what really got me. Forget that it is really entertainment, that there are millions of people watching the guys on the other side, that it doesn't really matter at all because these are talk show hosts. Forget all that, here is what really got me back on the wagon and why I will never return to the cable news wasteland.

I could have probably written another novel with all the time I wasted in front of the boob tube getting riled up all night. Ouch. Now that hurts.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in January

Getting Hemingway's Bed

He did sleep. Between hunting big game and fishing for swordfish and fighting in the First World War, the Spanish Civil War, WWII,  bullfighting and boxing and writing brilliant novels and winning Pulitzers and Nobel prizes and going through four wives and three homes and doing just about everything a writer can do to make a name of himself and still be taken seriously, after all that he did sleep. In a bed. I had walked past the room he had been born in a hundred times on my way to the attic. That room still held me in awe, but the more terrestrial part of his life, the one of waking up in a bed like anyone else intrigued me. That's why I said I would get his bed.

The Hemingway Foundation needed someone to drive up to Petsosky Michigan to get his boyhood bed. I voluteered. Why not? Petosky figured into many Hemingway stories and I wanted to see the cottage so central to his earlier stories. But more it seemed like I could get a little closer to the man. A bed is fairly personal and I thought bringing the bed back with me would give me more insight into the writer, the man, and might just be a great adventure. Of course it was during January and the biggest snow of the year. But who cares. Hemingway wouldn't have batted an eye.

So I headed up in my Ford for Petosky to the home of his great nephew who had the bed in a  storage shed. The trip up was long and lonely and snowy. But I hummed on the adrenalin of my mission. It was right in there with driving to New York to stomp around and look for agents. It ranked up there with getting my first novel published by a man who had never pulblished anything. It ranked right up there with deciding to write fiction when everyone I knew was taking a real job. It certainly ranked up there with the day I went up to his attic.

So I met his nephew. Jim. He was a nice man with a contagious smile. We made small talk and then he showed me the storage shed that contained the bed. We dug out the bed from under a bunch of junk. The springs were rusted and the white paint had flaked off. But it was his bed, his nephew assured me with a chuckle. One of the spindles fell off and I put it in my pocket as we loaded the bed in my Explorer. The great nephew bid me farewell and I headed back for Oak Park.

Writers like to embellish. If you were Hemingway you embellished like a God. But I really did run into a blizzard. The Midwest was hit with the worst snow storm in twenty years. The highway literally disappeared. I crept along with my strange cargo until I was forced off into a parking lot where a lone bar light burned through the whiteout conditions. I left my car and went into the bar to find other stranded travelers. Suddenly we became a club and we passed the night drinking and telling out stories. I said I was a writer and that I was bringing Ernest Hemingway's bed back from Petosky. People politely nodded and smiled and moved away.

The storm lifted and I got back on the road at dawn. I drove into Oak Park late in the afternoon and unloaded the bed in the Hemingway house where the Foundation repainted it and put a new mattress on and made it up like Ernest had just slept there. I'd like to say I glimmered something about the man from his bed or that my quest to bring the bed back gave me an idea of what he had gone through in some of his adventurers. But in the end it turned out to be just some rusted old steel springs and peeling wood that I brought back from a storage shed in the middle of nowhere. In that way, it was very Hemingway.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in January

The Downloadable Classroom

If you have kids in school now then you are in the down loadable classroom. Now we are all teachers. If little Johnny or Suzy has a problem the teacher simply downloads it to the parent. The download comes in the form of emails, websites, twitters, webinars. You name it, teachers discovered the cyber world has a built in time saver--you download all your problems to the parents and you have done your job. Also, you can vent in a lovely one way vehicle called the email bomb and dress down little Suzie or Johnny's deficiencies and again the problem has been taken off the teachers desk.

Used to be a teacher had to teach. If a student really didn't get it then they had to get in there and teach...you know, convey a concept to the student who is having a hard time grasping the concept. Now. They simply let the parent know the student is having problems and would they please work with Suzy or Johnny on their science, math, social studies, reading, geography, and by the way little Suzy and Johnny talked in class, forgot their pencil, forgot to put the lock on their locker, took too long going to the bathroom, chewed gum, texted on their phone, burped, looked out the window, yawned, looked bored, laughed, scribbled on their desk and would you the parent please take care of that also?

Ok. I get it. Maybe everyone doesn't get these emails. But education has become a web based commodity and the teachers are gatekeepers. If there was not an internet then homework could not be near as elaborate and certainly any kind of disciplinary problems would be taken care of in the classroom. What the open laptop does for teachers is it allows them to vent at that moment when a kid makes them mad. They vent directly to the parent. What a luxury. How would you like to vent every time your boss made you mad or you had a problem at work. But the teachers have found a perfect get it off my desk device. Clearly the problem student is now at the mercy of Blackboard.com.

But if you are pulled into the classroom for a conference then you will be introduced to another little time saver for the teacher--the TEAM. No longer will you face off with your kids teacher--you will face off with seven teachers who back each other up. Again, think about work. You have a grievance against your boss. You meet him with seven people who back you up. I don't think so. In the TEAM world it is your word against the seven teachers. Watch out for anyone who speaks of the THE TEAM. There is no responsibility in that kind of plurality. No one is at fault except for little Suzy or Johnny and by proxy you the parent. Like the faceless void of the Internet--there is no responsibility for teaching your child.

So the only thing I can think of is to block the emails. Maybe then a teacher might pick up the phone or actually solve the problem in class. Or they might....um, five letter word, starts with a t and ends with an h....ah, I know, teach!

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

A Pebble Could Start an Avalanche

You never know what could start an avalanche. In book marketing there is a feeling of being completely overwhelmed. You could concentrate on the big sites and press releases and try and get major media hits. This requires time and supreme effort and a lot of times does not pan out. This doesn't mean you shouldn't try for a People Magazine or a USA Today or the New York Times. But books are a funny thing. You never quite know what starts the big slide toward a bestseller and that is because books are still sold the old fashioned way--by word of mouth.

In the internet age we are constantly bombarded with notices. So and so wants to be your friend, so and so wants you to join their group, an email from an old friend who noticed you had published your book. Our email boxes bulge with unanswered queries as we go thundering down the road for Larry King or Good Morning America. But the truth is we just don't know what will be the stick, the rock that will break the precipice. I know lots of authors who have done the big shows and their books still didn't hit. That doesn't mean these shows didn't affect them, just not the way they thought they would. Big publishers put thousands of dollars behind a new author in promotion and the book falls from site. Why? No one really knows.

When I was trying to get my first book published I used to send out six queries a week. Sometimes I would just get out four or five and I would carry the last one around with me unable to find a mailbox or a stamp. Many times, the publisher or agent who would respond would be to that last query! Who knows why, but it happened more than once. It is probably just that last unturned rock, that final exhausted moment where you put the final three chapters in the mail that the Gods line up for you. Who knows, but you really can't afford to not do it.

I had an email the other night from someone I knew in college. They said they heard I published another novel. I was tired and had been traveling all day and almost didn't respond, dangerous because then other emails would flood in and I might never get to it. But just before I went to bed I responded and asked how he was doing and yes I published another book and here is a link to the book on Amazon. Maybe he will buy it maybe he won't. Maybe it didn't matter that I responded. But then again, maybe he is a film producer, a friend of a friend who knows Oprah or who is in a book club or who has a large network of friends he emails regularly. The point we just don't know what pebble might start an avalanche--so we better make sure we give each one a good kick.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com

http://www.pantonnepress.com/chapter1.pdf

A President That Talks

Wow. I don't know if you caught the news conference last night with Obama, but it was really something we haven't seen for a long time. A President that talks. Amazing. Someone would ask a question and he would give an intelligent answer. There were no soundbites. No evasion. The President responded to questions with cogent, well thought out arguments on why he was pursuing his policies. The Press wasn't quite sure what to do. They were used to a man who evaded, obfuscated, mumbled, shrugged, grimaced, then just walked off. We haven't had a President like this since...since...I don't know, maybe Kennedy? We are in new territory. This man is smart and he stays at a level that demands everyone else be smart also. What did the right wing pundits have to say last night. He was acting confident. He's not really confident. He is hiding behind a mask of confidence. Very good acting then. Best line..."Everyone thinks I was all ginned up to spend eight hundred billion when I came in....I wasn't." True. We cant' even blame him for our troubles. A President who doesn't communicate in a clear forthright manner lets us off the hook. We can say it is the President's fault. Not this time. If we are going to blame this man for our troubles we better study up, because there is a new sheriff in town and he is not a dumb man. The pundits may call him the anointed one or disparage him for being arrogant or falsely confident, but the truth is the era of moron is over and the idiots know it better than anyone else.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com

The Politics of Obscurity

John Kennedy Toole. How many people have heard of him? Maybe some. Maybe.
He wrote A Confederacy of Dunces. The novel went on to win a Pulitizer. Highly reviewed. A classic. The author. He committed suicide ten years before the book ever saw print. 32. He was just thirty two when in 1968 he decided to cash it in. Written a huge manuscript dog eared and typed and smudged. Sitting down in New Orleans with his mother. Doing nothing. Waiting to be discovered. Eating rejection letters. Waiting to be discovered. Not many people know what thats like. You spend your best moments. Your heart and soul. Give your best years to this mound of paper filling your desk and then you begin funnelling it out to the world at large and it comes back. No one gives a damn.
So you can imagine old John. I personally never knew him but I do know him.Any writer does. You have one horror as a writer. Comes to you at night in your sleep. That you will die in obscurity. That what you have to say will find no voice among your fellow man. You write because you are driven. You write because you have no other way to make sense of your existence.You publish so you will leave footprints. That no one will see your passage is the knife at your throat as the sands flow. Time. It starts to run you down right after you finish your book. How long will it take to get it in print. Will it ever get in print. Will it stay in print.Will the manuscript ever escape the box, the basement, the attic. Immortality. A flag that you have passed.
And so you press on. Send it out. Send it out some more.And then it comes back just as fast. No one wants it. No one gives a damn that the talent you've been given. God palmed to you. Means nothing in the world. Take John. Just written his opus.His raison d etre. Reason for being. And there it sat. He must have known. You always know in some part of you when you have written your gift to the world. Usually it's the first novel. Sometimes the second. But you know. This was the one that I came together for. I know it's good. No one else gives a damn. So you send it out some more. Then again. Then again. Again. No one cares. Worse. No one wants it.
John must have papered his room with rejection letters.He must have decided there was no way to pass that wall. The wall of indifference.The world did not want his testament. He sat in his mothers house with his thousand page manuscript. Typed. Carboned. Smudged. In New Orleans. 1968. Hot. Twilight. Sitting. Obsurirty floating in with the night and then it overwhelmes. Drowns you like some miasma. I'm never going to beat this thing. It will win. Not me. I will be crushed underfoot by indifference. No one cares. The writer unrealized. Just thirty two. And so he ends it. Snuffs out his life. The wall of indifference falling on him.
Ten years later his mother takes his manuscript to an edtior.A genius discovered. Dead genius. Obscure. A pulizter. A classic. John Kennedy Toole. You think he didn't know. Didn't know that in death his novel might have a chance. Or was it just some black horror coming over him. Swirling him up. The horror of the artist damned to obsucurity. To the night.
Maybe he got the last laugh. Maybe.

Hemingway's Lost Short Story

You may or my not have heard about Hemingway's lost short story. The son of a friend apparently had been holding onto the story for all these years. Seems Hemingway in 1925 wrote this satire on bull fighting and sent it to this friend. Now it has come back into the limelight and the Hemingway estate does not want it published. It will be sold at Christies for about eighteen thousand. Eighteen thousand dollars for a short story at a time when you couldn't' give away a short story. The form is basically dead. The heyday of the short story was in Hemingway's time when "slicks" like the Saturday Evening Post paid as much as four thousand dollars a story. In todays dollars, probably like twenty thousand, maybe more. Hemingway of course made his mark with the short story. In Our Time was a collection of stories that brought him to the attention of Max Perkins at Scribners. You know the rest of the story. So here we are in 2009 where a short story is discovered and people are willing to pay almost twenty thousand dollars for something the Hemingway estate deems unworthy of Ernest. As a writer I can only envy those days when the written word was held in such high esteem that a short story was like a movie today. Those writers were the celebs of their time, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Dos Passos. Apparently the story spoofs bull fighting, something Hemingway held in high esteem, but others do not want to see the light of day. It is interesting that the Hemingway short story will get about what it would have in 1925 dollars. I guess some writers really are timeless.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com

Revolutionary Road

Back about four months ago a reviewer said, "Rocket Man reminds me of Revolutionary Road." I thought, well, interesting title. That was it. Another review came in a few weeks later, same comparison. I still did nothing. Then came another. And another. Then I heard about the movie and I finally went to a bookstore. Richard Yates struggled in 1961 to get readers. His book came out and basically dropped from site. Now why is that? Here is a book that pegs suburban living in the 1950's, nails down the monotony, the feeling that we should be doing something more than just going to work and coming home to a house in a suburb among other people doing exactly the same thing. Maybe the reason Richard Yates novel found a hard audience is because people do not like a mirror put in front of them. Now the novel and the movie are deemed brilliant. Seen through the safety of almost fifty years we can safely relate to this suburban couple. I have had people react violently to Rocket Man. Some had defended the suburbs. The Daily Herald just came out and termed the article "Author's new Novel Takes on Suburbs" http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=262957&src=5The assumption that an author is attacking an institution is implicit in the headline. There have been fears from other people that Rocket Man would be alienating, neighbors would stop talking to us, we would be politely shown the door back to the city. In Revolutionary Road, the couple see themselves apart, some would say in the year 2009 they see themselves as the "cultural elite." People who have reviewed the novel have been dismayed with this view and see their eventual comeuppance as just deserts. We are told from day one to not rock the boat and we don't appreciate our art pointing out our foibles, posing the question that there must be a better way. Yates named his novel, Revolutionary Road, thinking that the placidity of the fifties had to give way to something. It did, the sixties. But here we are in 2009 with another novel questioning the way we live in the year 2009...I wonder what the teens will be like?

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=262957&src=5

http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0615213073/ref=pr_all_summary_cm_cr_acr_txt?%5Fencoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

American Entertainment

I attended a staple of American Entertainment this weekend: the big time sporting event. The game I went to in Chicago was not a good game. Both teams were at the bottom of their standings. The beginning was a study in light and sound. The lights dropped as fireworks went off and earthshaking sound shook the arena. A large bull floated like a dirigible through the pumped out smoky haze. Then the basketball game started and it was quiet enough to hear the squeak of the players tennis shoes. First time out and a bagel, a donut, and a coffee cup raced around on the giant Trinatron. The crowd simply went wild. People screamed uncontrollably for the bagel and the donut that ran neck and neck. Then the game resumed and we were back to the squeaks of the tennis shoes. Another time out and a man came out and began shooting T shirts from a large gun into the crowd. The place went nuts. Then a meter came on the Trinatron for screaming. The crowd exploded as the meter went into the red zone. Play resumed and we were back to the squeaks. Another time and out five people tried to eat twenty four cookies in five minutes. The crowd screamed in contortion as a fat man stuck the final five cookies into his mouth. Play resumed and we heard the dulcet tones of rubber on wood.

I began to watch the players on the Trinatron. It was more exciting. More dynamic. When I looked down at the real players they looked strangely normal, a bunch of grown men trying to shove a ball into small hoops. So I went back to the Trinatron. Another time out and a giant tic tac toe board was set up on the half court. People lost their minds as two boys tried to put the giant X's and O's in on the grid. Play resumed and everyone went to sleep. The game ended after overtime failed to get a rise from the crowd. It didn't really matter who won. We all came to see something extraordinary and we did. Too bad it wasn't basketball, but as Americans we expect more from our movies, sports, television shows, than just the event. We expect what Hemingway said so long ago: "In the end the age was handed the kind &*%# it demanded." I guess that's what we got.