A Writer’s Diary Entries From Late March, 1999

Sunday, March 21, 1999

7 PM. I’ve been walking for the past hour or so, listening to NPR’s All Things Considered and the excellent series On the Media, which gives me pause about postponing – or canceling – journalism school.

Reading the Sunday Times’s special Retirement section made me wonder if I’m getting too old to break into a career like journalism, which is a young person’s profession.

After all, in seven years I’ll be 55, old enough to take Elderhostel courses. But it’s very hard for me to think of myself as soon becoming “near-elderly.”

An article in the paper’s Magazine section about the decline of Levis – now being rejected by 15-to-25-year-olds in favor of edgier jeans with wide bottoms – made me think about my own baby boomer’s preference for tapered Levis like the one I wore today.

I do have some pants with wider bottoms – but nothing like what teenage boys wear. Mark Bernstein said that I’d probably “look stupid” in clothes meant for young people.

At 10:30 AM, I met Mark at the Airport Hilton. I left my car there and he drove us in his rental car to Las Olas Boulevard via A1A. (Mark drives with a very heavy foot on the pedal, making me slightly carsick.)

At the Coffee Beanery, I got iced tea while he didn’t get anything as we sat there and chatted. Then we walked along Las Olas and the Riverwalk for several hours and had a bite to eat.

It was nice to be out in Fort Lauderdale on a Sunday afternoon. For a change I wore my lenses rather than my glasses because I knew I wouldn’t have to read.

Mark said he had a nice Saturday in Hialeah with the extended family of his mother’s attendant. The visit made him aware of the split between the Cubans who came to the U.S. thirty years ago and the newcomers.

One recent balsero argued with the old-timers and laughed when they called him “communista” and “lazy, like all the Cubans who lived under Castro for decades.”

It reminded Mark of the arguments between East and West Germans he’d heard in Europe.

He said all the Cubans are – like his mother’s attendant – very warm and friendly, but also homophobic, racist and very conservative.

Of course, to me, Mark himself is a racist. Several times he blamed his inability to get another academic job on affirmative action, though I doubt they hired a black female in every case – as he thought probable.

When I said I’d be happy two relinquish my Nova visiting professorship to a black female after a year – that’s what I’d hoped would happen with my CGR job at UF Law – Mark said I was stupid not to fight for something I was entitled to.

That’s exactly the point: Why does being a white male entitle me to anything? But I wasn’t going to let our conversation drift into an argument.

I feel sorry for Mark. He’s stuck in that horrible town of Oxford, Ohio, living a life where’s he gay but unable to express it   except in through sleazy incident that almost ruined his career (and which he seems to take no responsibility for).

Mark’s an old fuddy-duddy who doesn’t like feminists, lesbians or, I suspect, himself. He’s not a bad man, but he’s a weak one, I think.

Look at me, being so judgmental. I’d best view Professor Bernstein the way I view other people: as an object lesson on how not to live my own life.

Monday, March 22, 1999

6 PM. Last night I watched the Oscars, which were pretty dull but provided the usual five or six interesting moments.

When I got to campus this morning, I saw an email from Teresa who said that of course I could stay with her this summer. She has no weddings to cater in May or June, so the pressure is off, and she said her sister is having a big party in June to celebrate Heidi’s graduation from high school.

Teresa also said her mother okayed my staying in Brooklyn later on in the summer. I’m going to need to take time while I’m in New York to prepare my fall Legal Studies courses.

Also, Tom wants me to do the first draft of that essay for the Dictionary of Literary Biography about my work, and I said I would.

In addition, I was thinking that I should try to spend time getting the shorter, gay version of my story collection published even if I have to do it myself. I want to have a nice-looking trade paperback with a really good cover and a photo (a good one).

My other books were all a bit cheesily made: the blank white back covers of I Survived Caracas Traffic and With Hitler in New York, for example, or the ugly and amateurish drawing on cover of Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog.

With the new technology available, publishers can now do much smaller print runs without expending a fortune.

Anyway, in addition to Teresa, Alice and Sat Darshan also wrote to congratulate me about the visiting professor position. Sat Darshan said that her mother-in-law fell ill, so Ravinder left for India for two weeks, leaving her to cope with the baby, the dog and her hectic work schedule.

I don’t know how she does it. Hopefully when the girls get back from India, they can help her out a bit – though I’m sure their presence will provide her with more work as well.

Before this morning’s class, Joey showed me a picture of his missing 14-year-old sister, who ran off with another girl in his car.

Naturally, I excused his absence on Friday and told him that he didn’t have to write today if he was too upset to do so, but he chose to go ahead.

I spent a little time on Nexis researching an idea I have for a column, then drove to Aventura for the hell of it and had iced tea at the Barnes & Noble at Loehmann’s Plaza.

Home at 12:30 PM, I went shopping at Publix after lunch and then read or just lay down for most of the afternoon.

I don’t think NATO bombing the Balkans is a good idea. The area may not be as vital to U.S. interests as they once were. Why do we intervene in some egregious human rights situations and not in others?

Thursday, March 25, 1999

11 AM. Yesterday I shocked myself by going to the Pembroke Pines Barnes & Noble after my half-hour walk and grading 20 of my 35 American Literature students’ papers.

I can leave the other 15 until tomorrow because today I need to concentrate on my other classes.

The trouble with not running tonight’s Fiction Writing as a workshop is that it’s harder to fill the time.

We can go over the chapter in the Burroway text and discuss the stories that the text has in detail. But I also know that a couple of my students still haven’t bought the text – Gordon Maddison’s wife, for one – and that pisses me off.

The assignments I gave them last week may be too short for us to get much out of them even if we have a workshop.

I have a Tom Wolfe Writers’ Workshop videotape that I got from the library, and that could take up half an hour.

But I wish I felt more prepared. I also don’t know how to deal with grading in creative writing classes.

Last evening, after I finished grading at Barnes & Noble, I decided on the five books I want to use in my Other Voices, Other Visions class: Junot Diaz’s Drown, Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine, Gish Jen’s Mona in the Promised Land, and Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory.

For a course in “multicultural perspectives,” I’ve got two blacks, three women, one Hispanic, two Asians, a Haitian and a Dominican: all of them younger writers dealing with being Native American or recent immigrants.

All are books that look like fun to read – at least for me. I printed out the Amazon.com pages (with readers’ reviews) in the library.

After leaving the bookstore last night, I went to my office to check email. Patrick said that Kitty Oliver, now heading FAU Broward’s Print Media program, came in to talk to his class yesterday.

They got to talking afterward, and Kitty said she’d love for me to teach for them. Patrick gave me her number.

*

10 PM. I just returned from school, got into my shorts and t-shirt, had a bowl of kasha with skim milk, brushed my teeth and took a Triavil (which I forgot to take earlier).

My Fiction Writing class went fine, of course. Between lecturing on “showing, not telling” and using the active voice and sensory details, going over the stories in the text, and having the students read aloud their assignments, there was enough to do so that we didn’t have to look at the Tom Wolfe video.

The same six students who were there last week came tonight; the others were absent again, although two of them phoned in excuses.

I still have the 15 papers to grade for tomorrow night’s American Lit class, but I have all day Friday to work on them.

Ben emailed that he hasn’t yet been able to talk to the Dean about salary this week. I told him that the figure he mentioned ($33,000) for the visiting professorship was adequate if not great.

He said that everyone in the department really wants me to teach there. If Ben thinks I’m going to do it as an adjunct because of that, of course, he’s wrong.

But you know me: I’m always wary of praise.

Speaking of being wary of praise: Kate Gale of Red Hen Press sent me a long email which I’ve only read once. I printed it out and need to read it again.

But I’d mentioned my $5,000 fellowship from Florida and I think there was this line in Kate’s response about my sending them a check for $5,000 and that raised my suspicions.

She said Red Hen needs authors who will push for course adoptions, who will accept editing, and who will go on reading tours and push the book.

I have no problem with most of that, but I’m certainly not going to hand over $5,000 – not even to get a book published by a press that generally does a good job and has a decent reputation.

I need to think this through.

Besides, my manuscript isn’t finished yet. I would like to talk to Rick Peabody about it – Kate read at Atticus recently, so I know he has an opinion about her – and maybe also to Martin Hester to get his input.

If I could publish the book myself for less money, that might be preferable. But I’m in no hurry.

My ego wants to have a short story collection published in four different decades, so I’d like to see it appear in 2000 at the earliest.

Maybe I should try to see if I can find another small press like White Ewe or Zephyr or Avisson, which published my other books without me having to lay out any money.

I know that other authors subsidize small press books – Rochelle Ratner called it “the dirty little secret” of the small press community – but it makes me feel a little cheesy. I’d have to be more desperate, I think.

As I said, I’m wary of praise from people who want something from me, whether it’s money or my ability to teach Legal Studies courses. Better to air on the side of caution. Like anyone, I can be flattered, but I don’t like being taken advantage of or being tricked.

Of course, if this story collection doesn’t get published by 2001 or 2002, I might feel differently about subsidizing it.

Saturday, March 27, 1999

7 AM. Last night I came alive as I taught.

In the auditorium-type classroom, the desks were arranged around a central space, and I felt like a nightclub performer as I walked around the “stage” as I went over the stories “Looking for Mr. Green” and “Good Country People.”

I always have some good anecdotes up my sleeve, and I got laughs when I expressively read the dialogue of Bellow’s poor Chicago blacks and whites and O’Connor’s Hulga, Mrs. Freeman and Manley Pointer.

About one-third of the class had already left before I got there at 8 PM, the usual time. Their Psych class ended early when the instructor was beeped for a patient emergency.

But I probably worked the room better with a smaller crowd.

Anyway, back in my office, I checked my email.

Sat Darshan wrote that she and Kiran have both been ill with bad colds all week; the baby is in a lot of distress, but the worst of it seemed to be over. At least she said her mother-in-law in India was better.

Teresa wrote that her trip to Italy has required a lot of research. They were planning to fly to Rome and toward the south of the country, but people have warned them about refugees hiding in the hills outside Naples who rob tourists. I don’t know if that’s true or just bigotry.

When I came home, I got straight into bed and fell asleep soon after that. I dreamed about Grandma Ethel showing me stuff she’d written in an elementary school as an immigrant girl using another name.

*

9:30 PM. After exercising lightly at 8 AM, I lay down and rested for the next ninety minutes, which is probably why I had a lot of energy the rest of the day.

I went to the Davie library and looked carefully at Kate Gale’s message, which didn’t sound all that money-grubbing.

It was clear that they wouldn’t publish my book if I didn’t appeal to them despite the money.

So I wrote Kate back, explaining that it wouldn’t be till May or June that I could have the manuscript ready because I want to write “The Silicon Valley Diet,” which will be the title story.

We’ll see what happens, but my initial wariness may not have been totally warranted. I’m a cautious guy, so I’m not going to do anything foolish.

What Kate said about the money is that if they would agree to publish within nine months of getting the check.

I got an email from Carolyn, who wrote after painting all night until 4 AM; she was excited and couldn’t calm down.

Her boyfriend is in Houston, but she’s okay with that because she can email him and she has a bad cold and doesn’t want him to see her with stringy hair and a puffy face.

Carolyn took him to New York last week to meet her family, and despite Carolyn’s nervousness, everything went well.

She said she was using a new kind of non-toxic turpentine which supposedly children could drink safely if they did so by accident.

She joked that in the absence of wine, she might give it a try. Oh, Carolyn is definitely an alcoholic. She suggested we could apply to Ragdale for the same time period next year.

After lunch, I went to Nova. If I’d known that my American Literature students’ morning class’s final exam was going to end at 10 AM, I could have been there a lot sooner. Oh well.

I lectured on post-World War II poetry and especially Allen Ginsberg, showed a little of a United States of Poetry video, and then had them write brief papers. We got out at 3:30 PM.

The grade roster that I got four weeks ago had only 11 of the 36 students on it, so I had to painstakingly print in their names and Social Security numbers, which took forever.

I have tons and tons of papers from these students: maybe over 100, including late papers. (One student handed in all of his assignments today.)

Obviously I’m going to have to read and grade them holistically. But more than half the class handed in self-addressed stamped envelopes, so I’m going to have to make at least some remarks on the pages.

Anyway, I couldn’t deal with any of that today.

Immediately after class, when the last person handed in her paper – yes, it was gratifying to have people come up to me and tell me how they enjoyed the class and how they hoped I’d be teaching them more classes – I drove up to Coral Springs, where I bought the Sunday Times.

After coming back here for dinner, I went out again, to the Pembroke Pines Barnes & Noble and read the paper for hours.

Now I’m starting to feel tired. My brain seems to be shutting down.