Letter

One of my recurring, self-appointed tasks at the bookstore is neatening, shoring-up, and rearranging the SUSPENSE shelves. It’s one of the biggest sections in the store and more apt to fall into slovenly disorder due to the kind of reader who gravitates to this kind of book and to the fact that popular authors of the genre often have dozens of titles under their name (as well as countless ghost- or shadow-written subsidiaries.) These are not precious literary relics but rather workaday grubby product—gas station roller hot dogs to be scarfed down on shift breaks rather than a multi-course sitdown meal.

Every few weeks I find stacks of Clancys, Christies, Silvas, and Pattersons knocked about or stashed page-side-out without regard to alphabet or any other carefully imposed order.

If Joe or Lisa or Maya are in, I can spend time putting them back into a presentable state. Because SUSPENSE is in the back room, when I’m doing this I cannot help customers check out or answer questions or refuse them entry to the bathroom. It becomes a self-contained, isolated task. It’s a thing that’s welcome from time to time.

Because I’ve arranged and rearranged thrillers, whodunits, et al so many times, I’ve formed associations with many of the more popular titles. But some associations go decades back. Every time I handle the bubble-lettered paperbacks of Nelson DeMille, I think back to the very short-lived newsstand gig I held during summer break from art school, circa 1990-92.

A narrow storefront at one of the corners of the Viagra Triangle, next door to the Ashkenaz Deli, it was a family-run business presided over by a nervous middle-aged man who refused to entrust me with much responsibility, which led to boredom, then to lifting the occasional twenty from the till for lunch at Popeye’s around the corner.

Most of the customers of this newsstand would not make eye contact as I rang up their copies of Cheri or Juggs, along with that day’s Trib or Sun-Times. Every now and again someone would bring up one of the paperbacks from the narrow selection of airport novels that took up a couple shelves along one wall of the room. DeMille was well-represented.

I was let go after a few weeks because, the nervous man informed me, a long-time employee had returned. He wouldn’t say it was for stealing, either because he dreaded confrontation or felt it wasn’t worth the effort. I wasn’t surprised, whatever the true reason.

It’s odd to be reminded of that long-gone place thirty-five years later simply by seeing the cheesy graphics of a mass-market paperback but that’s how memory works.

I’ve inhaled two short Patrick Modiano books over the past week. They’re besotted by trapdoors and unasked-for reminders of forgotten history. I want to read the rest but we don’t have any more in the store.

The ones I borrowed are shelved in FICTION—a section I don’t get to work in much for reasons I don’t entirely understand—even if they are sort of detective stories, albeit without the kind of resolutions or repeatable pleasures that fill the part of the store that is my domain.

These drawings are some of the first few for Melville’s The Confidence-Man. No publishers big or small for this one. I’ll put it out myself in a few months.

Speaking of memory, fifty-six years ago this morning, I began in some hospital in Moscow, USSR. Can’t remember the number but I used to know it.

The presale’s up for the Chicago alphabet book I illustrated.

One week left to see the Rainbo show.

The public domain train keeps rolling. The Jungle is now up for preorder. You can buy drawings from it this very moment. I’m trying to put together an opening event for November.

This one was more of a slog than the others. A prose stylist Sinclair is not and the book is a lot longer than I recall. Still, I enjoyed making the drawings and that’s the not-so-secret purpose of the entire project: to smuggle out a bunch of art to people who wouldn’t have otherwise looked at it.

There was a noble purpose to Sinclair’s book but his kind of thinking has been laughed away and forgotten so completely that much of the book now reads like science-fiction. Fair wages, good working conditions, and such are a fantasy to most these days. I can’t see it getting better anytime soon.

I read Tim’s new book months ago but because of printing delays it’s just now coming out. It’s a novel about a guy he was friends with back when he worked at Jinx Coffee, nearly thirty years ago.

I had a good talk with him about it and wrote a review.

A writer I designed a book cover for put it on a coffee mug. I showed it to K and she said people would pay good money for one with a Chicago alley on it. We’ll see.

Also, she’s decided to stop printing and stapling her classic zine, Greasy Spoon’s Weirdo Du Jour, after sixteen years, but you can get the newly-scanned (for the first time ever!) digital version right here.

Rainbo show is up two more weeks.

My problem with art openings goes way back. I don’t think I’ve ever successfully navigated one. The gap between expectation and reality never closes.

Colin was in town a couple weeks ago and came into the bar with some friends during my shift. I joined them on the patio after I got off and the subject of success came up. I told them I’d find something wrong with a parade thrown in my name down Michigan Avenue. But more than likely, I wouldn’t go. To me, success would be making a living off the work, have it seen and read, but divorcing it entirely from me as a person.

Tuesday Paolo and I hang the work in a couple hours. Paul generously buys us lunch. Then I go to the coffeeshop around the corner to wait until 4pm when the bar opens. It always feels like the countdown to an execution, the last few hours. I’ve tried all kinds of mind games to stop thinking of it like this but the dread never lifts. Not until I’m on my way home and replaying all the ways I failed.

This failure feeling has nothing to do with who does or doesn’t show up or with how many pieces sell or don’t sell or anything else external. It’s all on the inside. I just can’t match the moment in a way that is satisfying or gives me peace.

K is already there when I walk in. I sit down next to her and don’t move around the room for the following four hours except to use the men’s room.

Brian tells me the work looks good. Then John comes in and sits with us for a while. In the picture he takes we look happy.

Tim comes and congratulates me on the show, as does Tom and a few others. Nat walks around and looks at the show. He doesn’t stay for a drink but thanks me for inviting him. Frank hangs out awhile. Then Jasmon walks in. He’s driven in from Nashville just to see the show. The highpoint of the night is that he and K meet. Then it’s over and the two of us share the Damen bus south.

The familiar autopsy rolls out in my head. I should be able to enjoy and appreciate this but I just can’t. The only relief comes from switching the subject.

Despite whatever foolishness knocks around my head, the show isn’t bad. You can go see for yourself through October 5th.

I’ve painted portraits of Lilliput, Crackers, Buttercup, Che, Romeo, and Grendel. Even a cat named Johnny Depp. Now comes a dog called Stevie Nicks. The afternoon after the opening, I load her onto the bike rack and peddle to a beautiful house off Elston & Grace. A little boy answers the door and smiles at the framed picture in my hands. Stevie Nicks died a couple months ago but my painting of her makes him dance around in place.

I leave to catch ‘Round Midnight with K at the Music Box.

Reading Saturday at the Old Town Ale House to mark the 75th anniversary of Algren’s Chicago poem.

Read an interview with K and I about her book. Thanks to Don for this.