Letter

There’s a horrible story in the news about a homeless man set on fire. Perhaps this kind of cruelty doesn’t rate when people regularly shoot up supermarkets and classrooms full of people, but it registered with me because I recognized the victim. Anyone who’s spent regular time in downtown Chicago over the past few decades knows the Walking Man. I mentioned him in my cab book. He’s a mainstay.

Eight or nine years back, I spent a bunch of time in the common area on the first floor of the Chicago Cultural Center. I drew the regulars and eavesdropped on their conversations. I thought it might be my next book. This was the first time I ever saw the Walking Man stop and sit down. He looked old and tired. 

Thereafter, I saw him sitting various public places more often than walking. I often wondered where he lived. My guess was that he had a bed somewhere but preferred to spend his days wandering. His clothes didn’t look like they’d been slept in. Maybe he was a peaceful sleeper or had a good clean spot to lay his head. But the news story stated he was lying down on Lower Wacker where many downtown homeless people live.

There are crimes that can be explained. Even violent ones. People have desperate moments or are under such strain that they crack and take it out on others. But I can’t fathom a scenario where a person goes out of their way to approach a man sleeping on the street, douses him in lighter fluid, and sets him on fire. If you know of a justification or even a theory, I’d love to hear it. Or maybe not. If this is a thing you can explain, you’re not someone I wanna talk to. 

I skip news stories all the time. I never watch war video clips or listen to politicians’ voices. I have things I need to get done most days and certain kinds of sounds and images interfere with my ability to do so. Everyone’s got their own threshold. I know mine. I would’ve ignored the homeless man set on fire story if ‘Walking Man’ hadn’t been included in the lede. I didn’t wanna know but I had to.

It’s not as if this man is my friend. But he represents something. Stands in for a distinct period of my life. When I crisscrossed the city in a cab 60-80 hours a week. Even back then, I didn’t necessarily want to know the guy’s backstory. It was just a comfort to know he was out there going along with no destination in mind. I probably felt like we had something in common. A taxi driver is aimless by definition.

Now he’s in some hospital clinging to life. His walking days are likely behind him. There was a link in the news story to another time he was attacked a few years back. People raised money and got him back on his feet. 

Here’s hoping the Walking Man has a stroll or two left.

—Listen to my talk with the writer Gint Aras and look forward to the one with Sam Pink on Wednesday. Full archive here.

—I reviewed some storefront Shakespeare and a brand-new play about some not-so-new people. Also a doc about commemorating D-Day and a funny/sad roadtrip flick from Iran. AND, Mallory invited her friend Dave to make me watch a found-footage horror movie.

—I made a cassette. Please buy one.

You keep writing even though I don’t write back. Aren’t you making friends in school? There’s gotta be a guy nearer than five thousand miles that you can lavish attention on. This sounds ungrateful. I’m flattered that I made an impression. We had so little time together. I waited till my last day to kiss you.

I replay it in my head a lot. All the ways I should’ve done it different. How much time I wasted with family when I could’ve been with you. Maybe that’s why I don’t write. There’s a lot of regret that comes up front and center whenever I read your name on the return address of an envelope in my P.O. box. They’ve been stealing my mail the last couple places I lived so I don’t take any more chances. Pay $30 a month to improve the odds of getting letters from lost causes and failures from my past. Like you. That didn’t come out right. You’re not the failure; I am. Your name just reminds me is all. Not your fault.

Maybe you’re an optimist. Or so desperately lonely in that godforsaken country that you send letters to a man halfway across the world who you have little hope of ever seeing in person again. I told you I’m never going back there, didn’t I? You’re the only good memory I have of the place. I’m including blood relations. Would you consider leaving? I know you love your mother and she needs you but are you willing to sacrifice your happiness for an old woman’s material comfort? Again, I know, selfish, insensitive. It’s what you love about me, no?

It’s weird to fall for an art historian. Like a cockroach falling for an entomologist. If we got together for real would you spend our years together studying me? Taking samples? Squinting to determine their substance under a microscope? Would you convince yourself you know what my paintings mean because you read a library full of books on the subject? Would I start to hate you for your theories and interpretations? They way you apply what your professors taught you to our life together? Would I cheat on you with your GAs at the university? Become an embarrassment to you professionally? A financial burden?

I know these are daydreams because we’ll never see each other again. You might write another letter or two, but you’ll eventually give up. I’m not worth it. Plus, one day on campus, a younger transfer student will catch your eye. You’ll stay semi-faithful to me——at least emotionally——for another month or two, but his excited and insistent way of fucking you will leave my one fumbling kiss a feint memory to make fun of as your heart returns to its resting rate, the sweat drying salty on you upper lip, in the small of your back, as you watch him drift off to sleep.

You’ll come back to mind at odd intervals. When more recent crushes fade. I won’t compare you to them. You’ll always have your own alcove, however remote, poorly-lit, or modest in square footage.

I have a book mostly finished. I’d like to have some help putting it out. Somebody else to market and distribute it. I’m terrible at those tasks and hate doing them. It would be nice to partner with someone who values what I do, who has more of a knack for the business. Odds are, I’ll put the thing out myself, but there’s no harm daydreaming. Especially when great writers are resorting to some out-there tactics to get their work to readers nowadays.

Bruce Wagner’s publisher wouldn’t put out his book, so he released it into the public domain instead. Anyone can print, copy, or do whatever they want with it, according to Wagner. It’s an extreme solution, but an intriguing one. According to the writer, his publisher told him that they couldn’t release a book with a character that calls herself fat (much less, one in which someone else says she is); the woman in question starts out at 500lb with a goal of getting to 1000lb. She calls herself the Fat Joan—a riff on a pop culture figure named the Fat Jew. This same woman later loses so much weight she basically vanishes. Joan and how she thinks about and labels her weight is probably the least likely reason that a censor should consider banning Wagner’s book.

One character turns into a bird, another’s so guilt-ridden by the suicide of a long-ago mistress he dedicates his career to women’s causes, only to get MeToo’d by what turns out to be a scam artist. There’s a lot of ugliness in this book, but its not there for its own sake—this isn’t a Tarrantino flick. The grotesquery is related to the current media moment. I wonder how it will read in a decade or two when Twitter and TikTok are as quaint as kerosene lamps.

Most of the main characters in The Marvel Universe are sick to a greater or lesser degree. Some have made careers of their maladies. They perform their illness on social media, hold fundraisers, and join forces with sufferers of other ailments to promote one another’s brands. Sickness is a marketing gimmick, a way to get ahead in their world. Addictions, scams, and even murder are common in this environment. Each is a bargaining chip of shifting value.

In the two books and one movie based on his writing that I’ve taken in, Wagner’s theme is always the outsize fame-mongers that dominate Hollywood, and, by extension, American culture. He freely mingles the likes of Kanye West, the Kardashians, land artist James Turell, Patricia Arquette, and untold other “influencers” in with his own characters. Limits of taste wobble, but it’s not prurient. Wagner’s no Marquis de Sade, he’s not even a Russ Meyer. There’s a sturdy moral framework undergirding his wildest flights through the gutter. There’s never any confusion about what the author thinks about the monsters he’s fashioned. The outsized absurdities in his writing don’t cloud his judgment. He’s a moralist like Swift or Moliére rather than any sort of libertine.

I got a kick out of this book but don’t know who else would. Not readers concerned with others’ judgments. We’re in a very straight-line moment right now. Everybody wants to be sure beyond the shadow of doubt they’re on the side of the angels. 

That’s not Bruce Wagner’s universe, nor ours. 

I don’t write anything as outrageous as he does but wonder if maybe there’s no place for what I did write in the current media climate. Wagner is resorting to publishing his next book with Skyhorse, I think. I wouldn’t do that. It’s a move borne of either desperation or a belief in free-speech absolutism. A look through that publisher’s backlist doesn’t inspire any good feelings. It’s a kind of lepers’ colony. I wouldn’t mix with Blake Bailey and Woody Allen, but Wagner must have other considerations. In the same interview I found out about The Marvel Universe he talks about recording an audio book for that antivax member of the Kennedys. Maybe his moral compass isn’t as ship-shape as it appears on the page. 

That’s where the best of us is always left. Downtime/private life is often a disaster. I never met the guy. Maybe he’s happy as a clam, but I don’t think so. Art always costs. 

He might be a monster but he made a beautiful thing.

—I interviewed musician Chris Brokaw in print and writer Kathleen Rooney on tape, and answered a few questionsmyself. My talk with writer Gint Aras goes up Wednesday. Listen to more talks here.