What Tony is reading

I've been too busy lately. At the end of February over the course of 8 days I signed the separation agreement with my wife, sold my old apartment, and acted in a fun sketch show at The PIT. I am now editing two fat books at work, one on construction taxation and one on construction accounting. If you are involved in any financial aspect of the construction industry, you should buy these companion volumes when they are published later this year.

I have also been reading. While I was reading Love & Death, edited by Carolyn G. Hart, a collection of 14 mystery stories, I pronounced it not to be literature. When I finished Love & Death, I then read After the Plague, a collection of 16 stories by T. C. Boyle, which is literature. Many of the themes and events in the Boyle book were the same as those in the Hart anthology. So, It's deficient of my to announce that one is literature and the other isn't. These works belong on a continuum and I have my subjective criteria for where I draw the line. Both books deal with themes of revenge, hatred, love, etc., and in both people die, people kill other people, and in some stories nobody dies. Both books are mostly in contemporary American English that is not patently "literary" (one story in the Hart anthology is self-consciously British to the degree that I could imagine P.G. Wodehouse putting it down and saying something like "No one would believe English people are this English"). I'm not just now going to try to lay out my fantabulous--and utterly idiosyncratic--criteria for what literature, but I will say this: Some of the stories in Love & Death got close to being literature. Stories in Love & Death tended to fail to live up to my standards of literature because of one or more deal breakers. For example, in one story about a teenage boy who disappeared shortly after an opiate was stolen from the town pharmacy, the 14-year-old girl who the narrator closely identifies pauses about two-thirds of the way through to tell someone all of the plot twists up to that point. That's a deal breaker for me. It was as if the author did not trust the reader to have followed the plot and needed a refresher before the finale assault on the dénouement. I paid close attention to the girl's recitation because I assumed she would make a mistake or leave something out and this would be a revelation or embedded clue. But, no, it was a straight recounting. T. C. Boyle could have told a similar story about a teenage boy and teft etc., but he would have trusted the reader enough to leave out the gratuitous recap. Here is one of the criteria for me: I don't understand everything that happens in real life; so, to the degree that fiction represents a glimpse of life as we live it, I don't need to understand everything in it either. As a writer of literature, T. C. Boyle leaves the reader with the sense that there is a definitive conclusion but does not need to always tell us explicitly what it is. Boyle is comfortable leaving the reader with the uncomfortable sense of having to ponder what happened--or possible happened.

Then I read The Essential 55, by Ron Clark. Clark, a Disney Teacher of the Year Award winner, explains his techniques for success in underresourced elementary schools. His book is about common courtesy and establishing and maintaining standards for behavior--which he did in some of the most difficult schools imaginable, including a school in Harlem whose students wouldn't seem to a lot of people to have much in the way of prospects. I took this book off the shelf at my library merely because it looked interesting. It was personally interesting for me because it is about setting and maintaining boundaries--something I am terrible at in my personal life. I don't know how to do it. For the most part I have been trampled on with no idea how I got myself into situations and no idea how to get myself out or avoid getting into such predicaments in the future: It's not just a book about 5th graders going to school in tough neighborhoods where nobody expects them to succeed. Ron Clark looks like Matthew Perry, by the way, who played him in the TV movie.

At this point I had exposed myself to too much of the tune of contemporary American English and I really felt I was starving for Regency era English, and even Victorian English--some kind of antidote. But before I got into Jane Austen and the Brontës, I decided to re-read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which I last read 25 years ago. As I began reading it I was struck that it was not as melodic as I had remembered; that is, until the monster speaks, who is the most eloquent person in the book. I was more struck in the early going by the "new Prometheus" aspect; a critic once described the book as an allegory driven by Shelley's sense of the burgeoning Industrial Revolution. Later in the book the theme that emerged more than I remembered was the potential for self-fulfilling prophecy in society, which I seen as Shelley's comment on human nature and the effect of prejudices. Because the monster was treated like a monster, he ended up becoming a monster (who was indescribably ugly and monstrous in appearance)--and Shelley makes no speculation that it is within human nature to set aside prejudices in order to prevent a catastrophic self-fulfilling prophecy.

Having finished Frankenstein, I have decided to re-read After the Plague, T. C. Boyle. After craving an antidote to contemporary English, and imbibing some, I find myself wanting to get to know T. C. Boyle's voice better. In fact, I'm not entirely sure what his voice is--but in saying that I am alluding to another of my criteria: Art is like magic--when it is done well, you are amazed and you don't know how it was done.

For my subway reading, last week I read Susan Shapiro's Secrets of a Fix-up Fanatic, which is hands down the best pep talk in print about how to be realistic and meet someone nice and raise the odds of meeting your soul mate. There is good advice in Sue's book even if you have already found your soul mate. She made me laugh out loud many times over the past few days--yes, on the subway.

I do want to mention blogs I read. Linda Fessing Up did a fun piece called "Why February is AWESOME!"--I am always a sucker for contagious enthusiasm. Get the Sh*t Out posted a demented little cartoon I enjoyed. Marx the spot has put up a series of posts lately that caused me to add him to little list at the right of this blog. There was a heckler at one of his improv shows (I wanted to see that show, by the way, but I am dead tired on Friday nights after working all week); there is a movie that he admitted having a soft spot for; and he had an experience with speed dating.

Lastly, I continue to be an ardent fan of How to be a person. Despite all the books I mentioned above, she is still my main literary influence these days (sorry, T. C. Boyle, other contemporary writers are having a stronger impact on me). I can't say that there is such as thing as a typical "How to be a person" post, but this one got my attention, a beautiful photograph accompanies this one, and she has a project beginning in March whose progress I think we'll all want to follow.

My Valentine

I did not sit in my apartment last night eating inhuman quantities of chocolate in my dim room listening to the howling wind, but I could have because my sister sent me a huge satin-covered heart-shaped box of chocolate. I brought the chocolate in to share with my coworkers. Yesterday was just another day. I stayed late at work. I swung by the grocery store on the way home to stock up in case winter got worse. And it was laundry day. But there is every reason to think that next year I will have someone to give flowers to.

Student Grad Show, Sat. (1/27), 6:30 p.m. @ The PIT

Kevin Allison's Level 3 Sketch Comedy Workshop is performing their work in their graduation show:

Saturday, January 27
6:30 p.m.
The PIT
154 W. 29th St. (between 7th Ave. and 6th Ave.)

The cost is $8.

I only get on stage about once a year in New York; so this will pretty much do it for me till 2008. And of course Henry the Horse dances the waltz!

Famous Unitarians

As you know, I am a Unitarian. There have been many famous and important Unitarians throughout history, including U.S. presidents such as Millard Fillmore.

Here is a list of famous Unitarians in arts and literature.

Even Unitarians can't remember who the famous Unitarians are: It is only today that I found out Herman Melville is one of us, which as far as I am concerned explains why Moby Dick is the most sonorous use of the English language in prose by an American in the 19th century.

What Tony is dreaming

Once, when I was in psychotherapy—why couldn't they come up with a name that didn't have "psycho" in it!—I dreamed that I was on my therapist's couch telling her about a dream I had and I suddenly had the realization that this was a dream and that I should tell it to my therapist. And then I woke up. Later that day I explained the whole matryoshka doll conundrum to my therapist.

I had a dream something like that last night. Over the past couple of years I have again become curious about the confluence of reality and dream, something I had grown out of as a teenager. (When I worked in fast food I swept the floor a lot. At night I would awake to find I had been dreaming about sweeping the floor, and I was annoyed that the only part of my life that could be exciting—my imagination—was as dull as my real life.)

A magnificent long-form improv evolves before you with all the wreckless logic of a dream, although I don't know why I am irresistibly attracted to long-form improv. It is painful to not go to Harold Night at the UCB Theatre, and yet I have not been since December 26th—the day after Christmas, and it was an excellent excellent show.

Last night I dreamed M— woke me up this morning. I was horrified when I saw my alarm clock: I needed to be at work in 20 minutes! M— was apologetic and said she had turned my alarm off.

"You're going to get me fired," I said laughing.

"I called your boss," M— said. "I want an explanation."

I gave M— a tour of my house. It was the house I shared in a poor neighborhood in Long Beach, Calif., down by the edge of the Los Angels River. I had five roommates and someone was always coming and going at all hours of the night; so, that fact that M— had come in and shut off my alarm did not strike me as strange.

I showed her the many-windowed little atrium over our front door—the six of us lived on the top floor of a two-story house. I told M— that my girlfriend and I lived in the atrium for a month, but the sunlight pouring through the windows was annoying in the morning.

That is factually untrue: I did not have a girlfriend and I never spent a night in that room. It did have a lot of windows and sun, and it was slightly larger than the bed that was in it. The atrium looked out on the park, where gang members hung out drinking and shouting and shooting off fireworks—and guns for all I know. If I was still going to therapy, Dr. E— would ask what I made of telling M— something that was totally untrue, and in a context of statements that are true.

I actually lived in a dinky room that hung over the side door of the house, a converted laundry room, slightly larger than my mattress, with a lot of windows. When I say "converted" I only mean that it didn't have a washing machine in it. I did have a very large sink—and I also had a small cupboard.

"I was supposed to hand in a book on Friday," I tell M—. "I've got to get to work and finish it off today." (This is absolutely true and, in fact, I got to work early today.)

"What is it about you and improv?" M— said.

"I'm not a performer," I say. "I've taken a few classes and I've seen a lot of shows."

"And yet your boss knows nothing about this," says M—. (I should add that M— is a real person and is very likable. When I woke up for real this morning I wanted to tell her all about this—it seemed so real! But unless she had the identical dream it would be impossible to explain why I thought I had to tell her my dream in which she asked me to explain myself re improv. If I was still in therapy, Dr. E— would ask me to explain this very thing, which would take many sessions at a cost of hundreds of dollars, enough money to take improv classes at the UCB all year, the very thing that I am try to explain. Also, I don't know M— all that well.)

"Listen," I told M—. "First of all, let's take it as a given that improv is important. You get it; so, let's skip that part of the explanation."

"O.K."

"Do you remember the last time I saw you?" I said.

"Yes. Of course."

I had two dreams about M— last night. Here I was referring to the earlier dream, in which we rode together on the train back to New York from Princeton, where I had seen an outdoor improv festival that she performed in. The train was a combined D, E, and F New York City Subway train, and once we sat down I spent most of the trip editing a book manuscript in my lap. (Facts: I haven't been to Princeton for years, I doubt that they have an improv festival, and certainly not on the football fields during winter, and, as a matter of reality, New York City Subway trains do not get combined to go farther distances and to places they don't normally go. My therapist would ask: Why Princeton?) O.K., back to the dream.

"Do you remember that manuscript I was editing on the way back to New York?" I said.

"Yes."

"That's the book that was due of Friday.”

"That was a month ago," M— said.

"The manuscript had a lot of problems."

It is here that I launch into a long explanation of the significance of improv in my life.

"Follow the fear"—Del Close said that. It's painted in white on the back wall of The Pit theatre. This is my second worst thing—I have not learned this lesson. My worst thing is my voice—I need to see a vocal coach; I need to get my deviated septum fixed. In the dream I go into vast detail that is too personal for this blog. M— interrupts . . .

"Wait a minute. Mostly I'm hearing I, I, I in all this," says M—.

"It's not so much about improv," I tell her. "That's why Freud was so interested in dreams. It's really about the dreamer."

M— doesn't look like she's buying that. So, I tell her plain as day: "I'm trying to transform myself for being uncomfortable with everything in my life at all times to being the ill-at-ease misfit I was meant to be."

By the way, I am performing at The Pit next Saturday (1/27) at 6:30 p.m.; $8. I'm in Kevin Allison's Level 3 sketch class and we're performing our work. It's a scripted show, however; so, it won't have the waking dream quality of long-form improv.

Today's writer's fantasy

I'm a full-time novelist and people tell me not to quit my day job.

You can never have too much dinner

O.K., you can have too much dinner, but my point is I'm having dinner tonight and I am very excited about it. A friend of mine pitched a collaborative writing project to me and I was sold from sentence one. Tonight is our first meeting--and we're going to have dinner. I wish I could say more, but we're keeping fairly quiet about it until we have a solid draft and talk to an agent.

I have been looking to do something different since September--when my novel was conceptually done (I've got a couple more drafts to go, but it will mostly be cutting and transitions). I have been adrift: I already know the next four novels I want to write, but before I commit to another piece that's going to take two or three years I want to get a few other things written. And I have felt I needed a collaborative project. But who to write with? I knew I wanted to do something different, but what? Now I know.

I am currently writing a memoir with my sister, which I expect to work pretty heavily on into July. This new thing is something I can do at the same time.