Letter

When I sell six or seven more copies of Old Style, it will break even; meaning that sales will have covered expenses. In the old publishing world I have little interaction with, this moment is called ‘earning out’. It means that sales have covered the expenses of manufacturing the physical book, advertising budget, and whatever advance the author received. The publisher then is obligated to send the writer royalties at some agreed-upon intervals.

My first publisher pays out once a year, my second never does because they’re crooks, and my third has received far more money from me than the other way around because I’m an idiot with no business sense. But what, if anything, does earning out mean if you do all the work yourself?

Old Style is the first of the three books I’ve put out entirely on my own that will have attained this distinction. I don’t know why sales have been better for it than the previous two. In addition to being a lousy businessman, I have no interest in gauging audience interest or catering toward this or that crowd. I just blunder forward following my own interests and instincts and hope that a few people respond now and then.

Even though Old Style has covered monetary expenses, it will be many years, if ever, when I can comfortably say that I’ve gotten back what I put into it. I wonder whether successful artists/writers feel the same after getting a big advance or making a major sale? This is where valuing art gets nebulous. It’s always right between priceless and worthless. But on the practical level, the price is whatever you can get on a given day.

How many copies of my books would I need to sell to feel satisfied? I have many boxes left in my house right now that I’d like to be rid of. But if a truck came and carted them away this afternoon, would I be truly happy? I’d still be primarily concerned with whatever I’m working on at the time that truck is pulling up. And I’d still be chewing on what I need to work on next after it drives away.

The project I’ve been engaged in most of my life can’t be measured in money. Fame is at least as slippery as money, but I doubt it would scratch the itch so it no longer itches either. Satisfaction of any kind is elusive and rarely last longer than moments. All that said, I’m very grateful to everyone who’s spent their hard-earned funds on my work and hope to keep taking advantage of that generosity to fund whatever work I’ve got left to do.

Skyler asks if I’m going to see Brokeback at Thalia Hall and I tell him I am. Alicia and Sam are going too. We decide on Skylark for dinner beforehand. Another in a series of “back-to-normal” exercises that everyone seems to be doing, or talking about doing, so often nowadays.

Most gatherings begin with a few minutes’ throat-clearing, almost prayer-like acknowledgment of plague time. It’s become exhausting and kind of rote. Maybe there’s no other way it could be, but it’s beginning to feel like we’re all going through the motions.

I get to the bar first and Jacob is there. We haven’t seen each other since before lockdown. In fact, last time was right here. He was on a date with the woman he now lives with. Jacob was the acquiring editor on my doomed second book. We talk a bit about it, but not too much. He’s out of the book racket for the moment. It’s good to see people I know from harrowing situations land on their feet. If we don’t move on, we sink.

Sam, Alicia, and Skyler show up and we eat, drink, and laugh. It’s kind of normal. Or, what we thought normal used to be. We’re trying our best.

Bill shows up at Thalia and sits with us in the front row. I love that he shows up to support guys that he plays with in other bands. There’s not as big a crowd as there should be, but the show is great. I always say Brokeback sounds like spaghetti western music. That’s a compliment. There’s a world-weary melancholy road feeling to a lot of their music. A screen plays loops of atmospheric landscape and nature footage going behind them. Bill and I whisper occasionally about how the images sometimes link up with the sounds, other times suggest something totally different. Minutes of cornfields remind us both of Children of the Corn, though Brokeback isn’t a horror movie soundtrack.

Towards the end, Doug comes up to the mic and says this is the first live gig for a lot of them in a long time. ——but we won’t get into that… then goes back to playing.

We’re all trying to do the old stuff but it feels slightly off. Bartending the next night, Emma and I talk about it. Feels like we’re ghosts or something. Like we’re dead already but haven’t been told, so we go on living, not knowing any better.

p.s. Adam, who runs Hello America Stereo Cassette, wrote some very flattering things about my book.

Do you ever have the feeling after opening a book that you’ve always known it? Like it was always nearby. Reading becomes more like remembering.

I’d heard about Frederick Exley’s book for many years, but avoided it for reasons I couldn’t pinpoint. Maybe when something is acclaimed in a certain way it’s a turn-off. There’s fear of disappointment. When the build-up is big enough the risk of shortfall rises proportionately. I didn’t want to hate yet another thing a bunch of people love.

The new thing I’ve been working on is a lot about fame and failure. What success means in this society. About how to relate to people you know who’ve gone further, either in others’ eyes or their own, and how to make peace with that. How to go on reconciling the likelihood that what you’ve devoted your life to will not matter to many others.

When I see a cheap paperback of A Fan’s Notes at Myopic, I decide to pick it up. Within a couple pages I can tell it’s the book I need to be reading right now.

The way Exley weaves autobiography with pop culture with artistic ambition with bitterness and envy is the same ballpark I’ve been mucking about the last few years.

I’m only a quarter way through, so don’t tell me how it ends. I want to savor it the same way I’m savoring the weird book I’m writing myself. I keep adding bits and pieces. Fragments from past and present. The artwork I‘ve been making, collages mostly, has been bleeding freely into the writing. I’ve wanted the writing and drawing to merge and it’s sort of happening.

Sometimes I get up from dead sleep and open the word file to write a line dreamt. Quickly before it’s forgotten.

— Crap Columns. Also, a new collage section layout.