The Lady Waiting for the Train

Mondays are cruel. I didn't know how cruel until I saw the lady waiting for the train. We were all waiting to go to Chicago with nowhere to go until the lady appeared. She gave us somewhere to go with our IPODS and phones and cold cold cold breath. Chicago had given up the ghost on spring and decided to torment all of us some more in our scarfs and synthetic leather jackets and no gloves. Gloves are for winter and it was March. So no gloves. That's the way I thought anyway.

So the lady waiting for the train was on the opposite platform. Trains come and go to Chicago. We were going. The other train was coming from. Usually we were on the opposite platform waiting for the train to Chicago. But not today on this cold grey windswept Monday that looked like snow. There had been an announcement. INBOUND TRAIN ARRIVING ON THE SOUTH PLATFORM TO CHICAGO. We all heard it and trudged across the crossing and stood with our backpacks and lunches and briefcases and handbags and purses old and young and middle alike. Except for the lady.

The lady stood on the opposite platform looking West away from Chicago. She smoked a cigarette and stared at all of us staring back at her. We had a group staring contest. The lady had a hood on and a scarf wrapped around her forehead and smoked a brown cigarette that might have been a cigarillo. Nobody knew. Nobody cared. We were all busy freezing and waiting for the train. So was the lady. But we knew. We knew she was on the wrong side. Somebody could have yelled across the tracks, HEY ARE YOU GOING TO CHICAGO? THE TRAIN IS COMING ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE TRACKS. We could have  done that, but nobody did.

Instead we took silent bets on how stupid was the lady. Was she really stupid or just a little stupid. She looked like she had already had children. The child years were over for this lady. She wore high boots a little out of fashion. She had on leopard something around her shoulders. Otherwise she looked Midwestern all browns and heavy makeup. She stared at us and smoked. We stared at her and waited. The lady looked down the tracks. We waited. Did she know? Maybe she wasn't even waiting for the train. Then the lady stubbed out her cigarette on the wall of the station and stepped inside a bar. She stood in the door like a pasty manikin. We waited. Maybe she wasn't going to Chicago. We heard the train.

The train came around the bend and got larger and larger. We watched the lady who watched us. We waited. We knew there was a point of no return for the lady. Once the train was in the station it would block the crosswalk. The lady would be stuck. Still, we weren't sure she was even going to Chicago. She looked very composed in her warm bar while we froze our asses off. But then she looked and saw the train rolling into the station and we knew the lady was going to Chicago.

She tried to get out of the door and run to the crossing. But the train rumbled ahead and screeched to a halt and became a wall between us and the station. We all got on the warm train and I found a seat and began eating my hot dog I had been saving. I looked out the window and saw the lady. She was staring at the train while it pulled out and it's too bad nobody told her the train was leaving on the South platform. But it was Monday and nobody cares about Mondays. 

http://www.billhazelgrove/.
Rocket Man will blast off April 26th

The Quiet Writer

There are not many quiet writers left in this day and age. Writers have to be heard and so they are very unquiet and blog and post and respond and twitter and facebook and write and write and write until someone hears them. Tis a sad fact of the author of today who must promote himself or herself to be heard above the white noise of our Internet driven factotum that tells us is in harsh terms where we rank on Amazon or if we even exist. Such is one school of thought.

Charles Portis the novelist of True Grit throws up the old ideal of the writer: the quiet writer. In fact most writers before the Internet were quiet writers. A few lucky ones could spout off in The New Yorker or less known literary rags bust mostly one had to speak through ones books and call it a day. In that way it was amazingly simple and sane and much less demanding. Sort of a long preparation before the big or not so big explosion of a book and then a return to the mine to get the next explosion ready.

The interview with Portis in the New York Times Magazine over his book being adopted once again for film is very interesting in that it is a last look at the way authors used to be. True the old writers such as Hemingway were very big promoters indeed. Ernest perfected the use of media and image and promoted himself through film, press, magazines, and of course his books. He built himself up in a way that any blogger tweeter author would salivate over today. Of course he largely had the field to himself and did not have to worry about millions of other voices. But most authors did not engage in this type of self promotion, most authors were like Portis.

In his interview he barely speaks. He meets the interviewer in a bar and hold s a five dollar bill in his hand and does not let go. He can barely wait to get out of there and only grudgingly consented to talk to the reporter when he agreed that he could not be directly quoted. The seventy six year old Portis hasn't published a book since 1991 and has stayed out of the public eye most of his life. He worked as a newspaper reporter while he published his early novels, one of which of course was True Grit and made into a movie with John Wayne.

I saw that movie as a boy in a small town theatre and later read his novel as an adult. Both times I was riveted  by the story and gave no thought to the author except that he was probably dead. Why? Because I had never heard of him and he had no presence that I was aware of. Of course that is the way literature should be. Let the book stand on it's own without a lot of noise from the author. But this would suppose the author has the guts to let the fates dictate his fortune or lack thereof. So therein lies the rub, most authors cannot afford to be so cavalier about their careers anymore.

So Portis leaves his interview without saying much still clutching his five dollar bill. We will never hear from him again. He is of a generation of writers who prefer to remain in the background and let their books speak for them. What a luxury.

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

Review of The Singular Mark Twain

You would think a man who was one of the bestselling authors of his time would not have financial difficulties. Just finished biography The Singular Mark Twain and I was amazed that apart from marrying well and making very good money from his books and lecturing--he had to file bankruptcy and died with very little money that was squandered by his daughters. When reading Twain's biography you are struck at how much money he made and how much he lost. He had a penchant for making terrible investments, getting caught up in get rich quick schemes and basically being bad with his money. Sounds like a writer to me.


We assume that as writers there are those out there with the mythical pot of gold. Well, there are. People do make millions from their books but they also lose millions. Mark Twain even had his own publishing company, his wife was wealthy, he made a bundle from lecturing around the country, his books sold well, yet he spent the latter years of his life in debt. He did what most people do when they get money, he increased his lifestyle and traveled.

He also really believed he had the key to riches with several inventions. What is interesting about the Twain character is that he knew a lot of times what he was doing was not in his best interests. But he could not help himself. He ended up having to lecture for years to pay his debts from a bankruptcy and basically living abroad because he could not afford to live in the United States. Amazing that one of our premiere authors could not afford to stay in his own house. He coudlnt' sell it either and ended up practically giving it away. The crash of 1890 pretty much wiped him out. I guess there is nothing new under the son. Hard times are hard times. Even for those at the top of the literary mountain.

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