Skip to main content

Families

I’ll never tell.

You’ve had a large, extended family with a lot of loud mouths at work and dirty dealings under cover. I had a small closed family where are mouths were expected to be buttoned up and there were no secrets under cover because everyone kept their secrets. Both dysfunctional, like all families.

How did I come to write about punk writers on South Street in Philly? I had no other choice. Every writer starts with an autobiographical novel, usually terrible and amateurish. I had one of my own, never finished. Because I couldn’t keep my actual life and family from creeping in. It was called Night Solo. But my father’s voice was in my ear. Everything in this family stays inside the family. Not a cult pronouncement, just an upright private Episcopalian one. So for my first major work I chose instead to invent an entire community. Estranged, lost, abandoned by everyone, just not as well educated as me. So I invented a technology that enabled them to fake it. Presto. Punk City.

More about this later. Fair warning. There’s so much to tell I’ll be telling you stuff I’m snippets. But hopefully, I can give you teasers. Fr example, once when I was living a Grant Street  found a hidden canvas by my dad, who was not just a DuPont engineer but a talented portrait painter, and this particular portrait was a nude of his sister, painted obviously without her having sat for it. He hated her. Unless he didn’t. And it took me many years to realize that Susie’s and my lives were some kind of longlasting competition with, maybe even revenge against, Aunt Mary.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Famous people I’ve been within a hundred feet of

  Mostly a true story . Trying to get you to talk. It’s a pretty long list. Didn’t talk to most of them. You and I grew up geographically close, the Reeve house in Greenwich. The Samuel Tyler house was only a mile away. Where I grew up. But we lived very different lives, and I didn’t tell you much about mine, because I was the evidence of failure making your dinner and wanting you to believe you could still have a happy ending to yours. I was wrong. I should have told you. Jimmy Stewart, Jack Lemon, Gloria Steinem, Jimmy Dean, Muhammed Ali, Stevie Tyler, Mick Jagger, Isaac Asimov, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Bud Collins, the BeeGees, and the roommate of Frances Scott Key Fitzgerald. A story goes with every sighting. Anyone you want to know about?
Post a Comment
Read more

I’m not the mean guy people say I am

After your mother threw me out, I went into a funk. I was drinking a lot. But I was still writing, some of my best work (more about that later). We didn’t talk much. She had a favorite TV show that was always on when I visited her of an evening. Murder She Wrote. She couldn’t follow the plots. We exchanged pleasantries. I didn’t usually have to help her off the toilet. But when she needed it I did that too. But God has always been tapping on my shoulder. He did again that night. I woke up suddenly. There was no electricity. No reason for me to know that. My bedroom had no lights, along with no sheets or other niceties. But there was no sound from the street, no light. My customary silence and darkness had roused me. I ran downstairs.  Her breathing apparatus was not functioning. I removed the ones that weren’t working. I found an oxygen bottle and attached it directly to her face mask. She continued breathing. Then I went back to bed. Then she started boasting I’d saved her life. I...
Post a Comment
Read more

Many Mansions

   Going on… Many Mansions  John 14.v.1-3 Including my own defeated and ruined fortress, but still with a view of sea and sky. Preface This book is inspired by a hasty response I made at a low point to my step-step-daughter when she was urging me to pray. I said, “All done for the night. Not in the mood for Jeeesus right now.” Contrary to my whole view of Christianity. Which is that if you claim, want, to be Christian you are. I don’t have to agree with your interpretations of the gospels; if they give you balm I accept your faith at face value. But I do feel a need to explain the Jeeesus citation. It struck a chord. One I can’t ever unstrike, given my life to date. This book is about my own relation to Jesus, which is personal but no more intimate than that of God to man.  Chapter 1 I wrote a huge book called “The Boomer Bible.” It sold nearly 100,000 copies over 30 years. I learned some things in the writing. Things only writers learn when they are trying to live ...
Post a Comment
Read more