I summarized the writing process on my Facebook page in 2013. I’ll save you the trouble of looking for it:
1996—Took a memoir class with Geoffrey Wolff. Told him I wanted to write “something” about my five stepfathers. “Think about a book,” he said, and “start taking notes.”
1999—Submit sample pages and a short proposal to the Maui Writers Conference. Get 19 queries from agents wanting to see more. Every agent sees more, then passes.
2002—Write a new proposal. Find an agent who sends out the proposal to 23 editors. I get 23 passes. One editor says, “Love the story, hate the writing.”
2009—Resubmit with a new agent a much shorter version of the 2002 proposal with a just finished novel (this was Madonnas). We send out on a Friday afternoon. We get our first offer Monday morning for both books.
April 1, 2009—Start writing the memoir.
2011—Submit finished draft to my editor in December.
2012—Get first round of edits. Massive revision follows. Turn in new draft. Another massive round of edits follows. Brainstorm many book titles, all of which are terrible.
2013—Turn in third revision. Another massive revision follows. More title brainstorming.
Halloween 2013—Submit “finished” memoir draft, ready for copy editing and proofreading. Book publishes in 2014, eighteen years after I thought I wanted to “write something” about my family.
Q: Why did you decide on Take This Man as the title? Were any others ever considered?
A: There were many—MANY—other titles considered. Things My Fathers Taught Me was a front-runner for a long time, but my publisher found it confusing. Take This Man feels perfect to me. It’s half of a traditional wedding vow (Do you take this man to be . . . etc) and god knows I heard those words enough growing up, attending all the weddings my mother had. As I thought it over, I started to see I was the man seeking acceptance from almost everyone in my life. I wanted to be taken in. I still want it, I think, if I’m being honest.
Q: You previously worked in book publishing before becoming a full-time writer. What is it like now being on the other side of the editorial desk?
A: Writing books has been my dream gig since college. I’ve been doing it full-time for the past five years and love it, but I was also an editor for ten years. I’d be lying if I said I don’t miss it, which is why I still edit the occasional manuscript freelance. I was privileged enough—and it was a privilege—to work on Bob Shacochis’s extraordinary novel The Woman Who Lost Her Soul. I miss listening to writers and learning what they know. Editing a manuscript from an enthusiastic author is like auditing a college course with an incredible professor. I’m not sure my editor feels that way about me!
Q: Your mother taught you to read at a young age, and your grandmother nurtured your love of reading by taking you to the library and to bookstores. How much of their influence do you credit to your making a living in the book trade?
A: I hadn’t made that connection but it’s an interesting one and probably right. My grandmother taught me to value books as physical objects while my mother showed me how important it is to appreciate the stories (and by extension the storytellers) themselves. Those loves drove me to work in books at the height of the late 1990s dot-com boom, making a fraction of what others my age were, but somehow it didn’t matter. Books were a special occasion purchase growing up and reading them was the one guaranteed time I could spend with my mother and grandmother that wouldn’t end up in an argument. Makes sense that I’d want to surround myself with them as a livelihood. Books were my safe place.
Q: Did you inherit your grandmother’s love of mystery fiction? Who are some of your favorite writers?
A: As I mentioned in the memoir, the first book purchase I remember is A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney. I knew Rooney could make my grandmother laugh when she watched 60 Minutes on Sundays, so I was really looking for something that I thought would make my grandmother happy. She wanted me to make my own choices, though, and never made any reading recommendations. She trusted me to find my own space in the books I grabbed off the shelves. Over the years, books from my favorite writers opened up a room for me to write in. It’d be impossible for me to do what I do every day without them having created that space for me. Just limiting the list to living writers, they include Edward P. Jones (our greatest American writer working today), Amy Hempel, Annie Proulx, Sherman Alexie, Louise Erdrich, Luis Alberto Urrea, and countless others.
Q: Your mother and your grandmother were both outspoken women. What do you think their reactions would be to you writing a book about your childhood?
A: I’m not sure there would be a book if they both hadn’t passed away. I don’t know if I would have been courageous enough. If they were still alive, though, my grandmother would be shoving a copy in every neighbor’s and shopkeeper’s hands in Echo Park. As for my mother? She’d write a glowing five-star Amazon review declaring this book worthy of the Pulitzer Prize. Twenty minutes later, she’d post a scathing one-star review with a subject line, “Email me if you want the whole story.” That’d give me a two-and-a-half-star average, right?
Q: In Take This Man, you include an excerpt from your mother’s unpublished memoirs, in which she wrote: “If anyone takes anything away from this book, it’s this: don’t waste your life hiding away like I did.” What would you like readers to take away from your memoir?
A: There’s a reason this book ends with a quote from Christopher Hitchens asking you not to waste a single moment in reaching out to anyone “who might benefit from a letter or a visit.” When I found my father on whitepages.com, I wrote him a letter. That letter both changed my understanding of the life I’d lived up to now and, with the introduction of my three new sisters—all of whom I’m crazy about—the life that lies ahead. I started this book as a way to understand why my mother made the choices she made. I finished this book to understand how those choices made me who I am. For years I wanted to find a true story on the shelves that would make me feel less broken. I never found it so I wrote it instead. If readers take away one thing, I hope they learn that a broken family can become a whole one with patience and empathy. I want them to then take that knowledge and spread that empathy to their own families, their friends, and save some of it for themselves. That would be a great start.
Q: What are you working on now? Will you be returning to Echo Park in any future works?
A: I’ve got ideas for one, maybe two, novels. Echo Park has been my Yoknapatawpha County for two books. It’s been a good home to me but perhaps it’s time to explore some new undiscovered country.
Enhance Your Book Club
On a visit to Istanbul, Turkey, Brando participated in the tradition of writing messages to loved ones, living or departed, on scraps of paper. Have members do the same and pen notes to someone special, whether or not you release the missives into the wind.
Brando and his grandmother were movie buffs and saw eight to ten a month. Share who you would cast as Brando, June, Maria, Frank, and others featured in the book if Take This Man were made into a film.
Pair your reading of Take This Man with Brando’s novel The Madonnas of Echo Park, which is set in the Los Angeles neighborhood where he grew up.
Take a virtual tour of the Central Library, where June and Brando were regulars. Today the building is considered an architectural highlight of downtown Los Angeles. Visit http://www.lapl.org/branches/central-library and click on “Art & Architecture in Central Library.”
Learn more about the author at www.brandoskyhorse.com.
About the Author
Born and raised in Echo Park, California, Brando Skyhorse is a graduate of Stanford University and the Master of Fine Arts Writers Workshop program at the University of California at Irvine. His first book, The Madonnas of Echo Park, received the 2011 PEN/Hemingway Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Art
s and Letters. For speaking engagements and First Year Experience inquiries, please contact the author at brandoskyhorse.com.
Also by Brando Skyhorse
The Madonnas of Echo Park
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Copyright © 2014 by Brando Skyhorse
Some names have been changed.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition June 2014
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Interior design by Erich Hobbing
Jacket design Rodrigo Corral
Jacket photograph Danielle Donders–Mothership Photography/Flickr/Getty Images
Author photograph © Eric van den Brulle
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Skyhorse, Brando.
Take this man : a memoir / Brando Skyhorse.—First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.
pages cm
1. Skyhorse, Brando—Childhood and youth. 2. Skyhorse, Brando—Family. 3. Authors, American—21st century—Biography. 4. Authors, American—21st century—Family relationships. 5. Mothers and sons—United States. 6. Fathers and sons—United States. 7. Identity (Psychology)—United States. 8. Mexican Americans—California—Los Angeles—Biography. 9. Echo Park (Los Angeles, Calif.)—Biography. 10. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Biography. I. Title.
PS3619.K947Z468 2014
818'.603—dc23
[B]
2013047740
ISBN 978-1-4391-7087-8
ISBN 978-1-4391-7090-8 (ebook)
Contents
* * *
Epigraph
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Closure
Thank You
Reading Group Guide
Epigraph
About the Author
Take This Man: A Memoir Page 27