I’ve been acknowledged!

. . . in Paul Meloy’s Islington Crocodiles, to be exact.

For the last few years, I’ve written reviews, first for Tangent, and now for The Fix. There have been ups and downs. For a brief stint, I was an object of derision over at an Asimov’s discussion group. One guy took objection to the fact that I gave him consistently bad reviews; I took objection to his assumption, “Because my story is published in a first rank magazine, it must be good.” Another guy tried to rape me on his livejournal. No one has shown up on my doorstep with a loaded gun, probably because the pennies-per-word most zines pay would barely cover taxi fare to the airport.

And then there are all those wonderful folks who email me, telling me how delighted they were that I understood their story — that at least one person understood their story. Since I write “mixed reviews,” dishing out the good and the bad of every story, many of these folks could have taken umbrage. To a man (and woman), they didn’t get offended, but were really very appreciative. Paul Meloy was one such author.

Here’s my review of “Dying in the Arms of Jean Harlow,” and here’s my review of the titular “Islington Crocodiles.” Eugie Foster has assigned me the review of Meloy’s collection, and I was just getting started on that when I read the acknowledgments. Woot! By the way, I love the way Meloy wraps up his acknowledgments . . .

And a word of thanks to Marina Voikhanskaya, psychiatrist, psychotherapist
and facilitator, who once told me to ‘shit, or get off the pot.’
Well, you hold the result of that counsel in your hands. Oh, yes.

Will I still be able to give an impartial review? You betcha. If there are any stinkers in this collection, readers of The Fix will hear about it. I like Meloy’s style but I’m not a blind fanboy. I’ve renounced authors before (Clive Barker, do you hear me? No? Oh, well.) Nothing harsher than a disappointed fan.

D.

No excuuuuuses

There’s an odd sensation when someone you know, but don’t know well, reveals something about his past that makes you realize, Damn, small world. Like when my boss back at University of Texas figured out that he and my wife had gone to the same elementary school. For that matter, he was the residency classmate of my competitor down in Eureka. Small, small world.

I had that sensation many times while reading Steve Martin’s memoir, Born Standing Up. He’s driving a yellow ‘66 Mustang up to San Francisco and I’m thinking That’s my car! And there’s the dysfunctional family, and his drive to perform, and the places he did stand up that I had visited as a teenager (The Ice House, The Troubador). Martin’s about twenty years older than me, but his story felt oh, so familiar.

This is a great memoir. I haven’t touched a memoir since whatsisname the Irish bloke with the drunk father pissed me off with his whining, and his complete failure to accept responsibility for his own alcoholism and his crash-and-burn marriage. I tried reading Robert Graves’s memoir after that, but there, too, the guy couldn’t manage a little honesty when he wrote about his adolescent crushes — all the guys formed these romances with underclassmen; they were innocent flirtations, I tell you, innocent! (I much prefer T. E. Lawrence’s brand of homosexuality. Paraphrase of the opening of Seven Pillars of Wisdom: Life was rough out there in the desert. We took what pleasure we could of one another. Deal with it.)

Martin’s memoir, as the title suggests, focuses largely (but not entirely) on his development as a standup comic, his rise to superstardom, and his departure from that narrow slice of show biz. Nothing struck me as dishonest. True, there were odd moments, such as his inclusion of early romances and his complete neglect of his later and presumably more serious relationships, but give the man his privacy. That’s one of the take-homes from this book, by the way: the living contradiction of an exhibitionistic, intensely private man.

(more…)