At the end of my freshman year in college, I needed to take my bedspread to the dry cleaner. It was a modish brown plaid (Calvin Klein? Some designer who had licensed his/her name.) I don’t recall that it was particularly large; in fact, it was almost certainly twin-size. But my friend Ellen helped me carry it to the dry cleaners and, at some point, with the giddy logic of the 19-year-olds we were — actually I was 19, Ellen was two months away from that birthday — we put it over our heads, so we appeared to be a two-headed brown-and-white ghost, or perhaps the middle part of a camel, walking across the main drag outside Northwestern’s administration building. And beneath the bedspread, we discussed Mr. Sammler’s Planet, which would be on our final on the modern novel, along with Lolita (a book I knew inside out), Beckett’s Murphy and . . . not sure. We had read an excerpt from Philip Roth’s When She Was Good and an impenetrable (to me) story by William Gass. But I’m sure there must have been at least four novels in the second half of the quater.
Mr. Sammler’s Planet ended IIRC — I’ll check in a moment — with the repetition of “He knew.” On that May day, as Ellen and I walked with a bedspread on our heads, we figured it out, got to the bottom of what Mr. Sammler knew and went on to ace the final.
Is serious thought and giddy behavior ever juxtaposed again once one leaves school? When were you at your most silly and profound? When was the last time you felt that way?
For the record, the novel ends this way: “He was aware that he must meet, and he did meet — through all the confusion and degraded clowning of this life through which we are speeding — he did meet the terms of the contract. The terms which, in his inmost heart, each man knows. As I know mine. As all know. For that is the truth of it — that we all know, God, that we know, that we know, we know, we know.”
Spring 2002. Barry O’Brien – friend, and at the time, fellow <i>Judging Amy</i> scribe – and I were languishing in that vacuum of producing a season of television where you’ve gotten through the first 13, and then discover that you’ve completely run out of all ideas and creativity, with nine episodes still to go.
Actually, I think we had six left at this point. We were miserable, the show was terrrible and we had to write ourselves out of a corner that, due to a myriad of extenuating circumstances, we were trapped in.
After sitting in the ‘room’ for seven hours, <i>everything</i> was funny. We started coming up with nicknames for all the folks we didn’t care for on the production. One was “Hangdog.” As we sat there laughing, I went to dictionary dot com and played the wav file with the proper pronunciation of hangdog. We cracked up at the monotone voice saying, “Hangdog.”
So I played it again. And again. And again. Over and over, and each time we’d laugh harder and harder, until both of us were crying, my stomach felt like I’d been punched by Jack Reacher… and I played it again. And again.
Anyone still in the building started coming down to see what was going on. I’d play it, they would not laugh, which made us laugh even harder.
And then it happened. One of us (and I honestly don’t remember who) said, “What if…” and started on our story problem and the characters involved. Something like “What if they were stuck in the office late at night, and just started going insane?” That led to that magical writer phenomenom where you just start riffing back and forth and the ideas started flowing like water.
We fixed, not only our story problems, but came up with the season-ending cliffhanger.
And though we tried a couple of times, after that night hangdog just wasn’t funny.
Well, damn! I had a story, but after reading Guyot’s, it seemed to puny too share. The man is hard to beat. An endearing quality I must admit.
For me, every collaboration’s like that. It never occurred to me that they’d be otherwise.
I think the minimum requirement is two people and the determination to do something difficult, so novelists get the short end on this one. More control over the finished product, but nobody to have that insane chemical reaction with.
Elaine, you must share. Especially if it affirms that such moment of giddiness can still be achieved in adulthood.
By the way — I get giddy (but not intellectual) when I send a manuscript off. Book went out Monday. I went shopping Tuesday. (New Coach bag, a tweed winter coat, a haul of Origins stuff. Oh, and a home demarbrasion kit. I read in a women’s mag that they actually work.)
But I think I’ve lost touch with inner giddiness because I can’t work when I’m sleep deprived. Never pulled an all-nighter in college. Even when last year’s book took me right to the precipice of deadline, that meant I put in, oh, an astonishing 8-9 hours on the final day.
The Evening Sun was a giddy place, however. I once remember having a “wing” party right after the deadline for the final, in which I (as the then-newest member of the staff) and Carl Schoettler (started there the year I was born, still going strong, one of the best newspaperman ever) consulted H.L. Mencken on the Ouija board to see how much longer the Evening Sun had to live. It came up “2 ED” which we thought meant “two editions.” Turned out to be “two editors” in fact.
Then we attached a stuffed raven to a helium-filled balloon and sent it over to the Sun side of the room, where there was much less merriment, day in and day out. Oh, a certain Sun staffer will tell you about the practical jokes they played on the evening desk, but we were the characters.
<i>Then we attached a stuffed raven to a helium-filled balloon and sent it over to the Sun side of the room, where there was much less merriment, day in and day out.</i>
See, that’s funny.
Okay, okay, I’ll share. It had to do with a bank robbery. Actually,five bank robberies to be exact. One particularly rainy afternoon, a bunch of us-husband and our three teenagers, two Monterey cops and one Montery Deputy Sheriff-were sitting in a coffee shop on Alvarado Street in Monterey yakking about everything and anything-something we frequently gathered on Friday’s to do. Some one (I think it was my son)mentioned how dumb it was to have five competing banks on one block and imagine the chaos if they were all robbed at the same time. Our cop pals thought that was hilarious. We were soon on the floor laughing when one of the cops menitoned a few inept cops on the force would be the perfect guys to take the call-and then all of a sudden the table was filled with napkins, pens appeard out of nowhere and we were making plans for the heist.
Alas, the plans were quickly wadded up and stuffed in pockets when the Chief sauntered in for his break. He joined us and asked ‘What’s new?’ I must admit he was a little pissed off when no one could answer without breaking up. When one of the cops finally told him, he reached across the table and grabbed a few of the crumpled napkins, and said -’Let’s see what you came up. Hell, I’ve had my eye on a cabin down by Big Sur. I could use the extra dough.’ There wasn’t a dry eye in the place. My son, the instigator, was laughing so hard he literally did fall off his chair.
I guess I should add that the idea intrigued me enough to write a novel about the heist and how the ‘perps’ got away with it – had to change a few things and make one of the banks a drug money launderer to justify the heist. It’s still in a drawer – like a few other practice books.