The Man Comes Around
You'd think that I could go to the gym for a schvitz at midnight on a Sunday and I could avoid bearing witness to a middle-aged Korean man blowing his nose, literally, into a bucket of cold water. But I've encountered such scenes my entire adult life, and they appear to be my destiny. I'll be writing about my love for steam rooms, despite the vile things that occur in them, elsewhere, soon, and for money.
With that, I welcome you to 2005. The 17 of you who've been with me since the beginning of the self-promotional phase of my writing career know that partly by accident, partly by design, and mostly by my warped idea of financial necessity, I've given each year a theme. In 2000, I foisted The Greatest Living American Writer onto a nascent culture of literary hipsters and basked in their ironic glare. I dedicated the next year to my Slam Poetry phase. That ended, mercifully, in 2002, when I decided to become a Pompous Right-Wing Political Pundit. We all endured 2003, my Rock-N-Roll Year, and then I suffered through 2004 alone and themeless, unless you consider Making Shrill Public Pronouncements Following A Nervous Breakdown a theme. Now, this year, I'm going to try something really bold. I'm going to try to be a Writer.
You heard me. No more gimmicks. No more personae. No more schtick. Just short stories and novels and non-eponymous satire and whatever nonfiction assignments come along. Self-promotion is in my blood, as is (on my father's side) kosher butchery. But from here on, I will only promote my actual self, and my actual writing, upon which I will stand, and off of which I will probably fall.
If this site chronicles anything from here on, it will be my attempts to write fiction, some of which will succeed, and screenplays, most of which won't. Sometimes I may complain about annoying things that happen to me during the day or that I watch on TV or read in newspapers, magazines, and online. In other words, this will be a blog, updated at my leisure. I take this writer's blog as a model, though I've got shorter hair. I may even answer reader questions, if I ever receive them.
Now please enjoy this published account of my visit to a strip club in Portland, Oregon, during my recent failed book tour. If you think that it's a somewhat un-literary way to begin a Year Of Being A Writer, you're right. But remember that Borges also once wrote a column about his sex life, though he was also blind, and actually had sex once in a while.
Many thanks to Kenan Hebert for the new site design. I like it very much. And Happy New Year again to you all.
Neal