David Klein's Blog, page 55

The Inevitable Decline

The guardrail is only about eighteen inches high, a modest barrier dividing a path from a road along one of my favorite running routes. I always leap over the guardrail. It’s more a hop than a leap, since the obstacle is not very tall. No planning required, no lining up the jump, just taking the next stride with a bit higher lift.

Yes, that puny guardrail almost tripped me up.

Then the other day my toe caught the top of the guardrail and I stumbled but didn’t lose balance or go down. I kept running. No harm. But there it was: yet another reminder of the inevitable physical decline.

Physical activity, sports, athletics–they’ve been an important part of my life from a young age. But I gave up playing organized hockey when I was forty, after a giant defenseman fell on me in front of the net and crushed me between himself and the ice. Competitive basketball ended at fifty, after I broke my finger and messed up my knee.

A year ago at this time I was playing tennis three times a week indoors at a club. That went away with the pandemic, although I got to play outside over the summer with some guys that were good fits in terms of playing level and casual disposition.

I used to train for and run races, and I’ve raced almost every distance, from the one-mile to the marathon.

But as certain sports and activities get left behind, I can’t help but feel the loss. Not for the competition, which isn’t important to me now, but for the pure enjoyment of a game and the ability to participate in it.

Those things I can still do I savor that much more. It’s all about the savoring.

I can still play tennis, although only seasonally now, and I have started looking at pickleball thinking it would be fun. I still run, but not too far and not too fast. I still get on my mountain bike and haven’t lost my riding skills, although I’m no longer searching out those trails with the steep drop-offs, insane log obstacles, grueling climbs, and terrifying speed descents.

I’ve even taken up some new sports—if you can call croquet a sport.

I have a piece of advice I share with everyone as they age: If you love a sport, keep playing it for as long as you can, because once you’re done, you’re done, there’s no going back.

But there is putting up the good fight with what you’ve got left. I’ll look for some tennis partners come spring. And I’ve been trying to increase my mileage when running, thinking I might run a few more races once races come back. I’ll be slower, but I’ll be moving, and that’s the most important thing.

Beyond the guardrail that I now have to pay a little more attention to on my runs, there’s this gate blocking off a closed bridge from cars entering. It wasn’t that long ago I would vault that gate in stride every time—putting one hand on the top bar and launching myself over. And it was a thrill.

I used to vault it. Now I give it the runaround.

Nowadays, I run around the gate, avoiding eye contact with it lest I am tempted, but still fondly remembering my glory days.

Almost everyone knows Dylan Thomas’ poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” I’m not going gentle. I’m going down swinging.

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THE GLASS KINGDOM, Lawrence Osborne

I was really looking forward to Lawrence Osborne’s new novel, The Glass Kingdom. I had read and greatly admired two of Osborne’s other novels: Beautiful Animals, about two young women on a Greek Island who set out to help a refugee they discover on the beach; and The Forgiven, a clash of cultures among Moroccan Muslims and Western visitors that results from a car accident.

Both of those books had complex characters, interesting moral dilemmas, and a strong sense of place and atmosphere. In comparison, The Glass Kingdom was disappointing. The novel starts by following Sarah, who defrauds a famous, but now senile, author she works for out of $200,000. She goes to Bangkok, where she hides out in the Kingdom of the novel’s title, a towering apartment complex.

The real main character seems to be the Kingdom itself, and so there are endless descriptions of the towers and the surrounding environs, and while the writing is moody and the place feels authentic, the story is dull and the characters ill-formed.

Sarah befriends a couple of other equally shadowy women in the Kingdom, who might be better at the con game than she is. As a main character, she lacks agency, and does some inexplicably dumb things for someone who is trying to lay low and keep a secret.

The point of view begins to wander to minor characters who as readers we know little about and don’t care a whole lot for. The story’s main question (What’s going to happen to Sarah?) gets answered, but I felt little satisfaction.

Oh, well. Even the best writers produce some duds.

3/5 Stars.

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Time for a Career Change?

I’ve been a writer for many years but now I’m wondering if it’s time for a career change. Already, I’ve had a lot of careers on my way to becoming a writer.

I got the first inkling while driving 1,100 miles to Alabama that I might have a hidden talent I’d never known about.

The talent is my ability to keep driving for hours and hours on end and keep myself entertained. But I was driving in a comfortable car at a brisk pace. I wasn’t sure my driving talent would translate well to being a long-haul truck driver, which seems about as thankless a job as I could imagine. Have you seen some of these highway truck stops? Would you want to steer those massive machines on icy highways? Plus I’d constantly be away from home.

Yet I sensed I was on to something—and it had to do with automobiles.

Then on my first day in Birmingham, with Julia in the car with me, we got rear-ended at a stoplight. More than a thousand miles of driving to get down here and not an incident to be had, but I’m here for a few hours and BASH!

The way cars are built today, the bumpers are single molded pieces of plastic. They rip and tear easily. A huge piece of my bumper was torn off and dangled by a single, pathetic thread. I pulled it off the rest of the way. Underneath looked shockingly bad, like the exposed innards of some gutted animal. I was thinking I’d have to stay down here until the car was repaired, and that could take a couple of weeks.

Missing a big chunk of the bumper.

I got the license and insurance information of the distraught kid who hit me. Yes, kid. Seventeen years old, a new driver. I told him it was all okay, just an accident. No one was badly hurt, although Julia did bump her head and later sat with an ice bag.

We drove back to her apartment. I listened for rattling and scraping, but the car drove fine. The glass covering over the rear light was cracked, but the light worked, the signal worked, the reverse lights worked. The rear camera still worked.

The next day I bought a roll of duct tape (one of my favorite tools), slivery gray to match the paint on my car, and I jammed the broken piece back in place and started taping it down. Honestly, it didn’t look so bad. At least there wasn’t a gaping hole. At a first glance from a distance, you might not even notice the damage.

An almost perfect repair?

I did such a good job with the duct tape I started thinking maybe I don’t need to get the car repaired. That, in fact, I’d already repaired it. And that got me thinking I’m pretty good at auto body work, and that maybe this should be my new career. I could do all repair work with duct tape, which comes in so many colors that I’m sure I could match almost any paint shade on any car. I could charge a lot less than expensive repair shops. I could help customers avoid those complicated insurance claims.

In a few days, I’ll be driving the car the 1,100 miles back home. I’ll get the damage professionally repaired as soon as possible, but I hope at the collision shop they at least admire my duct-tape artistry.

More likely, they’ll shake their heads in a knowing way. Then I’ll go back to being a writer.

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Gearing Up for the Solo Road Trip

What’s more compelling and creatively inspiring than a road trip? How many novels and films have the road trip spawned? From Jack Kerouac’s counterculture buddy trip “On The Road” to Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic, Pulitzer Prize-winner, “The Road,” to . . . National Lampoon’s “Vacation” movies, and a movie I highly recommend, “Almost Famous.”

I’m heading out this week on a solo road trip. I’ve taken a few such trips in the past, and they have been memorable and important. I drove alone from Santa Cruz, CA to Buffalo, NY, many years ago, a road trip that served as a key transition in my life and got me pulled over by a Texas Ranger, ostensibly for speeding but I think because I had California plates and therefore was likely carrying drugs. I managed to talk my way out of any trouble.

To put a difficult personal experience behind me, I took a road trip to the shores of Maryland where wild ponies ran and I came back better for it. Once I took a solo motorcycle trip through Switzerland to help stir my creative juices and confront a few truths about myself. I almost accidentally tipped my motorcycle over a ravine when I got off of it to stretch my legs. One self-truth I discovered was my quick hands to save the bike.

Despite these adventurous moments, the mainstay of these trips was the solitude I had to face during many long hours of driving and riding. As I like to quote myself, “Solitude is one of life’s intense experiences, and yet seemingly nothing is happening.”

That’s because it’s all happening inside yourself. As a writer, I’m used to spending a lot of time alone, but working alone is not the same as experiencing solitude, where your mind is free to wander anywhere it wants to.

My mind inevitably starts asking some of the tougher questions: Am I the person I want to be? What should I do next? Am I on the right path? (GPS takes care of the pavement; I’m talking about life’s path.)

I’m looking forward to this time of solitude—and to what I might uncover about myself. Whatever that may be, I’ll embrace it.

This road trip is taking me to Alabama, right into a hotbed of COVID, unmasked BCS championship celebrations, and the spawning grounds of a new U.S. senator, that Trump sycophant Tommy Tuberville, who is probably less qualified to be a senator than I am. Oh, Sweet Home Alabama.

The great unmasked of Alabama following a football game.

But I miss Julia so much I’d traverse Hades in order to see her, and right now Julia is in Alabama. I’ve been down there twice previously to see her, and have flown on both of those trips with Harriet, but this time I’m solo.

Sixteen-plus hours of driving, and a return trip a week later. I don’t know how long the trip will take, what I’ll see, or what I’ll discover. I’ll have podcasts and music and books and food. And a hybrid car that can go 500 miles on a tank of gas. Mostly I’ll have solitude. It’s what I want.

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The Bills Have Me Riding the Roller Coaster Again

Owen’s lot in life is to have a father born and raised in Buffalo, NY, and therefore Owen was also fated to be a Bills and Sabres fan, which I admit I carry some guilt over.

The Sabres have never won a Stanley Cup in more than 50 years of playing. I was in the stands with my father and brother when they lost in the finals to the Philadelphia Flyers in 1975.

The Bills are best known for losing four straight Super Bowls in the 1990s. Since then, they have been mostly mired in mediocrity. When I worked for a newspaper in Buffalo, I often had sideline press passes to the Bills games. They won very few of those games.

The fans are loyal, but the teams apparently cursed. The “wide right”; the “no goal”; the “Music City Miracle.” As I grew older my interest in Buffalo’s teams waned as other interests took their place, although I started paying attention again when Owen came on board.

He and I made a road trip to Buffalo a few times to see family and attend a couple of Bills and Sabres games. He kept me up to date on players and stats. But I didn’t have the passion like I once did. I didn’t expect much, I didn’t care too much.

Josh Allen (AP Photo, Jeffrey T. Barnes)

But then yesterday happened. In an era when COVID and the political situation can slash the spirit of even the heartiest, the Bills pulled off their best season in more than 25 years. Yesterday, they beat the Indianapolis Colts 27-24 in a nail-biter that came down to the last play of the game.

I had no idea I could still be susceptible to the turbulent emotions of being a fan. We sat together and watched the game, and as the momentum flowed back and forth, and we high-fived great plays and yelped over bad ones, I experienced the full range of elation and anxiety, the thrills and the chills. My pulse rate actually soared, my belly twisted.

What the hell was going on with me? Part of me was a child again going to a game with my Dad, another part of me was a father bonding with his own child. It was a perfect convergence—but boy was it exhausting.

We were both sweating—from the comfort of our own couch. I was texting with friends, with family. The game connected me with a lot of people.

The Bills got lucky three years ago when they drafted a quarterback, Josh Allen, who has turned into an elite player. The Sabres, a weak team, have a star of their own in Jack Eichel. The NHL drops its first puck of the season next week.

What am I in for? I don’t know. But I wanted to quickly get this written in the giddy moments after the Bills won a tense playoff game, and not after they lose one, which they will likely do in the next few weeks. For now, I’m in full fan mode again—an unexpected and roller-coaster state of mind I thought I might never know again. Thanks, Owen. I think.

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To Calm Myself, I Spent Some Time With Charles Today

The last few days have spawned an onslaught of insanity, shame, and sadness in our country, along with a corresponding uptick in anxiety and tension within myself.

So I turned to Charles Bukowski this morning:

And then there’s one of my favorite Bukowski poems, “The Laughing Heart.” This reading by Tom Waits is perfect in tone and voice:

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“Getting the Words Right”

I get asked about my writing process. My answer is: Yes.

In other words, writing is definitely a process, often a long one, with starts and stops and dead ends and open roads. But people cringe when they hear that. They just want to write something once and be done with it.

That’s rarely a good idea.

Fear of Writing

When I was teaching writing classes at SUNY Schenectady, I discovered that students feared writing almost as much as they feared public speaking, and sadist that I am I made them do both: write papers and present them to the class.

I spent a lot of time bending students to the belief that writing is a process. I forced them to have a process because whenever I assigned a paper, I divided it into a number of smaller hand-in assignments that went something like this: idea generation, rough draft, peer review, second draft, editing session, final draft.

Those are the basic steps of writing, but for every writer the writing process itself looks a little different. Some writers generate ideas and discover their purpose by freewriting in a journal. Others draw diagrams or flow charts. Others take notes while reading and researching.  

Some writers compose early drafts with pen and paper. Others don’t know what a pen is for and instead type everything on their computers. Some writers like organizing via notecards, or making lists, or using specialty writing software.

I use flowcharts and other visual aids to discover and organize my writing.

There is no single right way, but having a process helps to alleviate writing fears and is the only way I know to produce the desired result.

Planners vs. Pantsers

In the world of novelists, writers are often divided into two camps: the planners and the pantsers. Planners outline, while pantsers just go for it and write “by the seat of their pants.”

Planners usually have less rewriting to do than pantsers, but their possibilities might be confined by adhering to a rigid outline. Pantsers end up throwing away a lot of what they write before they discover their purpose. Neither method is better than the other.

I’m a hybrid writer, especially when writing a novel. I make a crude outline covering as far as I can envision the story, which usually isn’t very far, and then I let creativity and imagination take over. I end up doing a lot of rewriting. My novels haven’t been through three or four drafts—more like thirty or forty.

Even if I’m writing an article or a professional email, I go through a number of drafts to discover and sharpen essence of what I’m trying to say.

Notecards, color-coded spreadsheets, multiple drafts.



Many pages simply must be tossed out.



Writing is Rewriting

Ernest Hemingway famously said, “The only kind of writing is rewriting.” This tidbit of wisdom from the Nobel Prize-winning author who considered 39 different endings to his novel A FAREWELL TO ARMS.

Personally, I embrace rewriting. It’s like getting closer and closer to an exciting destination. It’s like watching the fog clear to reveal a brilliant day. Or sharpening a dull knife to a razor’s edge.

No matter what your writing process is, no matter if you are writing a resignation letter or a letter to shareholders, a novel or a love note, your goal is the same: getting the words right.

I’ll sign off with one more quote:

“More than a half, maybe as much as two-thirds of my life as a writer is rewriting. I wouldn’t say I have a talent that’s special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of stamina.

John Irving

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Are New Year’s Resolutions Helpful?

I like to ask people what their New Year’s resolutions are. It seems like an effective way to start an interesting and meaningful conversation. Or start a fight.

Because, come on: New Year’s resolutions? Didn’t we suffer enough in 2020 to now put ourselves through the self-defeating promises made/promises broken routine for 2021?

But we all want to be better, do better, and feel better, so we often turn to New Year’s resolutions when the calendar turns.

Most resolutions involve fitness/weight goals or financial goals. Unfortunately, few of those resolutions stick.

As Arthur C. Brooks writes in The Atlantic, it makes sense that such resolutions rarely succeed: “If meeting self-improvement goals were so easy, we wouldn’t need to make resolutions in the first place—we would just change.”

Instead of resolutions that ask us to engage in a version of self-sacrifice (exercise more, spend less) in order to self-improve, Brooks suggests the resolutions of forgiveness and gratitude, neither of which require exhausting ourselves, denying ourselves, or sabotaging ourselves, but both of which can contribute to happiness and well-being.

I flirted with an offshoot of gratitude in 2020, when I embraced the concept of savoring after taking the Science of Well-Being class early in the pandemic. Savoring is an immediate, in-the-moment, sensory experience, and I savored shaving, my raspberry crop, a winter hike, even my silent wind chimes. I felt better for it.

Melissa Kirsch, writing in the New York Times, recommends we think small and make only tiny resolutions, “keeping in mind that your nerves might be frayed, your zest for a life overhaul a bit depleted.”

Instead of the broad and subjective resolution of “getting fit,” she suggests perhaps resolving to stretch a couple times a week or doing two push-ups every day, then seeing where it leads.

By now you must be wondering what my resolutions are. Sure: run a marathon, eat a strictly vegan diet, make more money, write a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, consume less alcohol and other substances, never say a mean word to or about anyone . . .

In reality, I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions—there are just too many to choose from. But I do think of the new year as a fresh start, and I’ve also been thinking recently about how to “bring out the best in me.”

Yes, that’s vague, subjective, and open to almost any interpretation, but fortunately the interpretation belongs to me and me alone.

For me, being my best me means being a reliable, loyal, and helpful person. It means I offer thoughtful counsel when my counsel is called upon. It means I give my best effort, be insightful, have perspective. To know when to challenge and when to comfort.

In short, I want to be on my game, and who doesn’t love the feeling of being on their game? I can’t always do it, of course, because who can, but trying to be that person is what will bring out the best in me.

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So You Want to Be a Ghost Writer

I was talking with a friend the other day about being a ghost writer. It’s such a great term: ghost writer. Haunting and secretive, because a ghost writer is the invisible spirit and voice behind a piece of writing that carries another person’s name as the author.

But the task of ghostwriting is anything but secretive. It’s deeply intimate.

I’ve served as a ghost writer for university presidents, CEOs, and the chairmen of publicly-traded companies. When someone else is signing their name as the author of something I’ve written, I have to do more than write well, I have to become that person: their personality and their voice has to become distinctive and illuminated.

The first time I wrote a CEO Letter to Shareholders for an annual report, I did some research by looking at other letters, undoubtedly written by other ghost writers for other CEOs.

It was this opening line, from Michael D. Eisner, the chairman and chief executive officer of Disney, that inspired and instructed me: “As the first rain of El Nino descends on Los Angeles, I find myself indoors and excited about writing my letter for the annual report.”

A simple, almost innocuous opening, but in reality so much more.

Did Eisner write those words? Or did a ghost writer? The question is irrelevant. What’s relevant is that Eisner is immediately portrayed as a person beyond his role in business, a person who notices the rain, a person who has feelings—and therefore someone with a personality. Right away, the reader cares.

That’s the law of ghostwriting: to reflect the personality, to uncover the authentic voice, to portray the mood and reveal the attitude of the person you are writing for.

To do achieve that, you have to spend time with the person, you have to ask probing questions (thus the intimate nature of the work), and you have to rely on insight and inventiveness.

My training as a novelist—inventing characters and investing in them, making readers believe in them and be empathetic toward them—has served me well as a ghost writer. And being a ghost writer—convincingly portraying someone else—has served me well as a novelist.

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“I Did the Best I Could With What I Had.”

Toward the end of his writing career, Philip Roth said in an interview, “I did the best I could with what I had.”

I’ve glommed onto that saying, hoping to make it my own.

Roth has won almost every major literary award. He’s written thirty books including some of my favorite novels, each one rich with the conundrum of human experience and packed with personal revelations for me: American Pastoral, The Human Stain, Goodbye Columbus, Nemesis. Every time I read one of his novels I start trying to write like him. Maybe because I’m in awe of quotes like these:

“He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach—that it makes no sense.”

American Pastoral

“You have a conscience, and a conscience is a valuable attribute, but not if it begins to make you think you were to blame for what is far beyond the scope of your responsibility.”

Indignation

But my biggest takeaway from Roth, beyond the writing itself, might be that phrase—I did the best I could with what I had.

It’s such an affirming and humble statement. It gives you permission to judge yourself in a positive light. You accept that you have a certain amount of skill, talent, motivation, luck, passion—everything it takes to be a writer, and you use what you have to produce the best work you can.

Who could ask for more of themselves other than to place yourself right where you belong, at the best place you can possibly reach?

“There’s no remaking reality . . . Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes. There’s no other way.”

Everyman

“I am marked like a road map from head to toe with my repressions. You can travel the length and breadth of my body over superhighways of shame and inhibition and fear.”

Portnoy’s Complaint

Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, National Book Critics Circle award, PEN/Faulkner award, the Franz Kafka prize—Roth won them all. But not the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was shut out for the writer’s highest honor. He had too many detractors, too many who resented him.

“The danger with hatred is, once you start in on it, you get a hundred times more than you bargained for. Once you start, you can’t stop.”

The Human Stain

There was the great writer, Philip Roth. And there was the stain: accusations of misogyny and narcissism in his work that critics say have diluted his reputation and importance.

I’m not a prize winner and likely never will be, but I hope I’m doing the best I can with what I’ve got. Even Roth had his doubts. While writing a book, he’d torture himself endlessly over getting it right. After finishing a book, he would despair thinking he’d never come up with another idea.

Did Roth have doubts about being able to do the best he could with what he had?

Who doesn’t?

But this is where you can get in trouble, when the voice says: Maybe you haven’t done all you could, maybe you could have worked harder. You’re not demanding enough of yourself. You’re letting yourself off the hook too easily. You should be more accomplished. You’re not good enough.

Where do these crushing thoughts come from? From ourselves. What can we do about them? Chase them away. Keep going. Do your best while you still can. That’s all you can do, because one thing is true for sure:

Life is just a short period of time in which you’re alive.

American Pastoral

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