Exile from Eden
Page 28
Dad wiped his face.
“Your eyes look different,” he said.
“They’re after-the-hole eyes, Dad,” I explained.
Dad nodded.
He understood.
After all, my father could straddle time too.
My father looked at Mel’s hand in mine and said, “When you were thirteen, you told us that you never wanted to go back to Eden. Remember?”
I squeezed Mel’s hand.
“But we’re not a very good version of Adam and Eve, Dad.”
Dad shrugged. “Who could know? It’s only a story.”
“All stories are true.”
Dad smiled and nodded. “How do you like it out here?”
“Well. There are no rules,” I said. “There are no rules, and it’s wild.”
Acknowledgments
Before writing this book, I had a dream about a wild boy named Breakfast. I never questioned the name, and I knew he had to be in this book, because like Arek, Mel, and Olive, he was part of what would happen next.
• • •
I went through a hole before I wrote this book.
The thing about holes is that when you’re in one, you can’t imagine being out of it. And then one day it just happens, and you realize you’re once again aboveground.
I wrote a few books while I was in that hole, and they are all to some degree self-examinations of what being in (and out) of holes is like.
• • •
Most of this book was written at my home in Southern California.
I wrote an awful lot of it in airports, some of it in San Francisco and St. Paul, and some of the final pages in Denver.
People don’t often talk about the place where a particular book was written.
I wrote about half of it on my laptop and half on my desktop computer.
They are both Macs.
I’ve done some edits here and there on a PC. It messes up the fonts and page numbers, which can be confusing when you go back and forth, but most of the time I have no choice about when and where I can work.
• • •
Like Max Beckmann, I have always been fascinated by the idea of the self-portrait.
This is my thirteenth self-portrait.
I am also fascinated with the number 13. (I prefer odd numbers to even, by the way.) I was staying with my aunt, Fernanda Tinti, in Trieste, Italy, on my eighteenth birthday. She gave me a silver key chain with the number 13 on it that day. She told me that for her, thirteen was a very lucky number, and I’ve never had any reason to disbelieve anything she ever told me. She was like my second mother, and I miss her (and Trieste) very much.
I think Beckmann painted himself in so many different ways because he was endlessly trying to strip away exterior and arrive at truth—what he called the deep secrets within. I don’t know whether or not any of us is capable or brave enough to expose all those truths. Max Beckmann tried more than eighty times, so I’ve got dozens of future attempted self-portraits ahead of me, at a minimum.
In 1947, Max Beckmann came to America to teach at Washington University in St. Louis. Today, the St. Louis Art Museum hosts one of the finest collections of Beckmann’s work, including The Sinking of the Titanic and his Self-Portrait (1950), which was one of the artist’s final works. He died in New York in 1950.
I remember it was quite an interesting cab ride the day I went to the St. Louis Art Museum with my great friend A. S. King to look at the Beckmann collection there. It moved me so much I had to explore what he saw and try to put some of it—however flawed my interpretations are—in a book. This one.
• • •
There are so many people I knew before the hole who supported me and helped me through the time that I wrote my lost and introspective in-the-hole books, and who remained my friends during the time that I assembled this after-the-hole self-portrait.
I have endless thanks, appreciation, and gratitude for them. First, my inspirational writing partners, A. S. King and Z. Brewer. You are beautiful, and I love you both. You help me be a better person and, hopefully, a better writer. It’s nice to know people who you can confidently say make the world a kinder place. Thank you, Jandy Nelson, for being the person you are and a writer whose words are brave and beautiful. And great thanks to Anthony Breznican, Mahvesh Murad, Yvonne Prinz, Alex Green, Jason Piccioni, Christa Desir, Michael Grant, Will Walton, and Tommy Wallach. Thank you, Matthew MacNish (Rush) and Jonathon Arntson. I love you guys.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Matt Faulkner and Kris Remenar, and also Brendan Heffernan. You make the world more beautiful.
And I have to give tremendous thanks to all the readers, especially the kids, all over the world who send me notes expressing positive things my books have done for them. There is no greater reward in life than hearing from you, and so much of this can only be facilitated because of mentors—teachers, librarians, parents, and friends—who help build those connections between words and their readers.
To my family: Jocelyn, Trevin, and Chiara, I love you very much, without end. And much love to Peggy, Gene, Rosemary, Aunt Kim, Cousin Kim, James, Dan, Matt, Amy, Al, Christie, Donny, Rachael, their swarming masses of children, Flora, Kim, Renata, Cindy, Patrick and Debbie, Steve and Linda, and all the ghosts who follow me everywhere.
Thanks to my editor, David Gale, and all the talented, enthusiastic people at Simon & Schuster: Justin Chanda, Lucy Ruth Cummins, Amanda Ramirez; and to my agent, Michael Bourret, and everyone at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret literary management; to Dana Spector at CAA; to Scott Rosenberg, who wrote one hell of a screen adaptation for Grasshopper Jungle; and to Edgar Wright, who, after reading Grasshopper Jungle, asked if I wanted to go to dinner and talk about that particular self-portrait.
• • •
One final note about Max Beckmann: He was once asked why he put fish in so many of his paintings, and what did the fish symbolize. Beckmann, who claimed he had never cried, and who never liked talking about what his paintings re-presented, said the fish symbolized whatever people thought they symbolized, and he included them in his works because he thought they were beautiful, and he also liked to eat them.
Sometimes thinking about fish makes me sad.
About the Author
ANDREW SMITH is the author of several novels, including Winger, Stand-Off, 100 Sideways Miles, Rabbit & Robot, The Size of the Truth, and the Michael L. Printz Honor Book Grasshopper Jungle. He lives in a remote area in the mountains of Southern California with his family, two horses, two dogs, and three cats. He doesn’t watch television, and occupies himself by writing, bumping into things outdoors, and taking ten-mile runs on snowy trails.
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Grasshopper Jungle
Winger
Stand-Off
100 Sideways Miles
Rabbit & Robot
The Size of the Truth
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Smith, Andrew (Andrew Anselmo), 1959– author.
Title: Exile from Eden, or, After the hole / Andrew Smith.
Other titles: After the hole
Description: First edition. | New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, [2019] | Sequel to: Grasshopper jungle. | Summary: Arek, having lived his sixteen years in a hole with his small family, sets out into a monster-filled world with his friend Mel to find his fathers and, perhaps, another human.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018025564| ISBN 9781534422230 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781534422254 (eBook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Survival—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. | Missing persons—Fiction. | Insects—Fiction. | Science fiction. | Humorous stories.
Classification: LCC PZ7.S64257 Ex 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018025564