FBR 99: Nearly there . . .

This would have been the hundredth issue of the Report, except that last week had a bit more of the nutty than I anticipated.

One of the hundred things that took my time was writing an essay. As you cannot possibly be unaware, the upcoming book deals with a couple of boys in 1959, visiting battle sites from the Great War of Secession. But because the book won't be let out until July, I was pained to see the 150th anniversary of the war celebrated without me. So my wife and I conceived of an essay that would appear now to herald the future coming of the book.

I first tried to put the whole blasted story into it, describing the novel, the memories that underlie it, how my wife and I visited my Cleveland neighborhood last spring, how we retraced the drive from Ohio to Georgia by way of the original TripTik my mother had saved for five decades. I even included some colorful memories of life in South Euclid, such as the day my brother lost his shoes and the FBI coming to the house and all that. Good stuff. Alas, it proved a stew with too many flavors. My wife, a copyeditor and copywriter for decades, had at it, chopping it with merciless love, reforming, melding, dulling here, punching-up there, and . . . voila! I had a quick "at" at her "had-at," and a 1500-word essay was born.

My favorite essayists Orwell and Capote were consulted during composition and revision, and I must say, it turned into a nice little piece, something on the order of: "the past that is always with us." I'll let you know if and where and when it appears. In the meantime, there's all that other work to do.