by Grimes, Tom
I said, “That’s fine,” knowing Frank had begun to feel powerless with regard to generating praise for the book. It was out of his hands and out of mine. The book now belonged to the world, and neither of us knew what the world would do with it.
We didn’t have to wait long to find out. January came. Colleen left. And one bleak winter afternoon Eric called and read me my novel’s first review.
From Publishers Weekly:This schizophrenic second novel from Grimes (A Stone of the Heart) veers from sluggish philosophizing and ponderous verbosity to snappy repartee and crisp narrative. Mike Williams, a left fielder and singles hitter for an unnamed major league baseball team, chronicles the intermittently compelling stories of his marriage to his high school sweetheart and battles with his agent, manager and team owner in the seasons between 1975 and the players’ strike of 1981. Proposing baseball as an anchor of sanity in the craziness of the business world around it, Grimes contrasts the sharp realities of life with “the sweet illusions of the game.” The first part of the novel, charting Williams’s rise to stardom and its burdens, is smugly pretentious and nearly chokes the sly, sardonic humor that is its principal redeeming feature, although the rest of the book is better focused. Williams observes, “We are ballplayers. We accept the ineffable and get on with the game.” Grimes should have followed suit from early on.
At that moment, I died in some small but irreversible way. Years later Charlie said, “The book may have had the same life in the world, you can’t know. What’s gnawed at you, though, what you can’t let go of, is that you betrayed your own ideals by not signing with FSG. That’s what you can’t live with.”
Having already disowned me, Little, Brown remained silent.
When a copy of the review turned up in my mailbox, I showed it to Frank. Normally, he read with uncanny quickness, but this time his eyes lingered on the page. He scanned the words twice to be certain he understood them correctly. “It’s one review,” he said, returning the sheet of paper to me. “It’s no big deal.” Yet disappointment—not in each other; our bond had deepened and I was more Frank’s son than his friend—clouded the book’s once illusory promise. All Frank had hoped for had not come to pass.
Selling the novel had been deceptively simple and effortless. But the novel no longer existed as a potential success. It was real and, by increments, it was becoming a failure. Not even Kirkus Reviews’ assessment of it as “passionate, entertaining, and refreshingly confident” seemed capable of reversing its freefall, or restoring my confidence in it. Over time it became clear to me that my confidence had all along been Frank ’s confidence. So deeply had I sought his approval that I never questioned his judgment. I hadn’t been able to separate my need for Frank’s affection from my need to look at my novel as objectively as possible. Which is why it’s taken me twenty years to understand that our unexpected friendship, rather than my novel, was the real work of art.
It’s also taken me twenty years to figure out that no matter what decision I’d made regarding the novel, I would not have made the right decision because, for me, there is never a right decision. I didn’t choose the wrong house. Whatever house I chose would have been the wrong house. In fact, I may have made the best decision. But my counternarrative for selling Season’s End would have been this: immediately after I’d committed to FSG I would have thought, John didn’t like the novel, but Pat loved it. I knew this. So why didn’t I go with her? Instead, I took less money and gave away the novel’s world rights. Pat had been hired by Little, Brown to find, entice, and sign extraordinarily talented fiction writers, to create a list equal to or better than FSG’s and, had I signed with her, I would have been the first to represent it. Season’s End may have even become a success. But I didn’t, it wasn’t, and by choosing to define myself exclusively as a literary writer I’ve chosen a profession and a life that promise to humble me. Every day I face a blank page, knowing that the majority of the words I commit to the page will be wrong, and after I reread my prose, I know a dozen necessary revisions will begin the moment I complete the first draft. But for me writing is a necessity. I exist in sentences. I forget my sense of failure. I forget time. I forget that I’m aging. I forget that one day I’ll die. Revising sentences is an act of hope, and connecting with a reader is the only leap of faith I’ll ever take. As a boy, I read stories that transported me, just as stories transported Frank, into a world that, paradoxically, was real because it was imaginary. Now I write stories because I continue to need imaginary worlds, and limiting myself to Season’s End’s fate was deeply foolish. The book did change my life, not by telling me who I am, but by not telling me. Its failure left me unfinished. Maybe success intimidates me. Maybe I’m afraid of completion. Maybe I know that if I don’t believe I can write a book better than the books I’ve already written, I’m a ghost.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Despite the book’s early reception, Frank’s faith in my work didn’t waver. He’d already awarded me one of the workshop’s six annual ten-thousand-dollar James Michener Fellowships. For the first time since I was twelve, I didn’t have either a full-time job or a part-time job while I was in school. As a kid, I mowed lawns and shoveled snow. I delivered newspapers. I jerked soda and washed dishes. In college, I hoisted coffins as a professional pallbearer. Later, I iced dead fish for a packing plant on Cape Cod. I managed a stationery company, a Soho housewares store, and, in Key West, I waited tables. Now, all I had to do was write. And, as a favor to Frank, I read fifty of the workshop’s eight hundred application manuscripts. “The borderline ones,” he said. Afterward, he selected the final twenty-five. I’d gone from being among the eight hundred to judging fifty of the eight hundred, a reversal of fortune I found incredible. Then he added, “I’m also nominating you for a Whiting.”
“What’s a Whiting?”
“An award for young writers, first books, et cetera. You’ll get thirty thousand. Just give me a finished copy of the novel.” At some point I learned that Whiting nominations are supposed to be confidential. But Frank had expected me to receive a larger advance, and annoyed, surprised, and slightly embarrassed by the fact that I didn’t, he not only wanted to help me, he also wanted to prove he still had the clout to bestow upon me a major literary honor solely on the strength of his name.
During the autumn of my Michener year, I’d begun my third novel. I wanted to have a new book under way before Season’s End was published, but Jody wanted to leave Iowa City. If you’re not in the workshop, it’s a gruesome town to live in. Hot, humid summers; glacial winters. No ocean, no museums, no theater. Lousy food, juvenile movies, and four hours from the nearest interesting city: Chicago. Also, Charlie had left, and from the time I finished my day’s writing until Jody returned from work near dusk, the house felt hollow. Yet I had difficulty imagining life without Frank’s constant, fatherly approval. I’d written a million words hoping to fill my emptiness and erase the perpetual sense of failure I’d lived with since childhood. But they hadn’t; Frank’s affection had. In his eyes, I didn’t feel like a flaw in the scheme of things. Jody had touched and healed one part of me, Frank another, and Charlie completed the family I’d longed for. I wasn’t prepared to lose it.
Nevertheless, Jody deserved the chance to leave Iowa City. So, in December, I dutifully entered the job market. Since I had no interest in finding a job, I was so relaxed during interviews that I was immediately offered three. Even the university I advised not to hire me wanted to hire me. The school was located in Texas and, in an effort to distinguish its new MFA creative writing program from the country’s other hundred and fifty, its administrators had decided to focus their program on “literature of the Southwest.” So, while attending the Modern Languages Association’s conference in San Francisco two days after Christmas, I sat in one of their hotel suite’s cushioned armchairs and explained to three English department faculty members employed by Southwest Texas State University that I had absolutely no connection to the region. “I was born in New Yor
k, I grew up in New York, and my literary imagination sees the world through the lens of New York. If you’re looking for someone who writes about the Southwest, please,” I said, “look for someone else. It’ll be better for your program.” I hoped to end the interview with that remark because I wanted to see a documentary about making Apocalypse Now and needed to catch a bus. Instead, I was asked if I read literary theory. “No. It has nothing to do with literature.” Did I believe creative writing could be taught? “It’s not a valid question. Do people ask if painting, dancing, and playing music can be taught?” Once I was free, I dashed out of the hotel, sprinted to nab the crosstown bus and, certain I’d impressed no one during my interviews, I enjoyed the movie guiltlessly. I’d tried to find a job but I’d failed. Selfishly, and no doubt childishly, I was content. I could return home to subzero temperatures and my new novel. But that evening, by telephone, I was invited to Texas for a campus visit. Grudgingly, I accepted. Near the end of January, three months before Season’s End’s publication, I flew to Austin and then, in the dark, was driven thirty miles south to San Marcos. The following morning, sunshine and an immense, cloudless blue sky mocked my dreary mood. As if to spite me, the temperature was seventy-two degrees. Everyone I met was nice. All were eager to have me join the faculty. But the next day it rained while I was given a tour of the area. Sights I had no desire to see were pointed to; places I had no interest in were explained in historical detail. On the return trip to the airport, the program’s director said, “If we offer you the job, do you think you’ll come?” I stared at the muddy field bordering the interstate and, instinctively, said, “Nothing about the place speaks to me.” I hated the houses, the landscape, the horizon, and the ground. Only after the plane climbed above a thick layer of gray clouds did my fear of exile slowly fade. And only when I stepped off the plane did I, despite Iowa’s ear-scorching cold, feel my spirit bloom and my muscles unclench. In the Cedar Rapids airport terminal, Jody hugged me and I gave her a kiss. As for what I thought of Texas, my expression made it known that she had no reason to ask. Within twenty-four hours, I had a tenure-track job offer.
“Take it!” Frank said.
“Frank, it’s Texas.”
“So what?” he said. “Go! Ride out the recession. You don’t have to stay forever.”
As I slumped in my chair and sulked, Frank laughed. Then he said, “You’re always worrying. Stop it. This is good news.” He lit a cigarette and flipped the matchbook onto his cluttered desk. After he’d blown an eddy of smoke toward the dingy ceiling he added, “Professor Grimes. I like the way it sounds. Hey, I’ve been thinking. Don’t buy a guitar with your book money.” Frank’s career as a jazz musician had influenced his conversational style because he changed subjects as unexpectedly as he changed chord progressions. “Buy a piano,” he said. I had played both instruments as a kid. “You can get those electronic keyboards now. The quality’s not bad, and they cost less than two hundred bucks. How’s the new book going?”
I shrugged. “Yours?”
Leaning back, he swept one hand over the manuscripts piled behind, beside, and in front of him, as smoke trailed his curled fingers. “Speaking of which …”
By the time I reached his office door, he was reading again.
Often, I took long walks in the woods, fifteen miles west of town, to look for fossilized arrowheads and Indian burial mounds. One afternoon, I walked deep into the forest and paused when the sun dipped below a ridge of high, leafless branches. The workshop had changed me, not simply as a writer, but emotionally, as well. I had Frank’s affection, and I couldn’t let go of Iowa.
But Jody liked the prospect of Texas. Before we met, she’d traveled extensively in Mexico, and living within five hours of its border appealed to her. Plus we needed a steady paycheck. Only, I’d been so determined to turn down the job that I’d forgotten the salary. “You don’t know how much you’ll be paid?” Jody asked, stunned. Forced to remember, I did. In a dismal, windowless office, the English department’s chair, a petite, stylishly dressed middle-aged woman who spoke with a pronounced Texas twang, had leaned toward me and said, “After you leave, we have to vote before we can offer you the job. But, unofficially, the salary’s twenty-seven thousand. Since we really want you to come, we’ve raised it to twenty-nine.” As a workshop teaching-writing fellow, I taught two classes and was paid ten thousand dollars. Now, Southwest Texas State wanted to pay me barely three times that amount to teach three times as many classes—six altogether, four of them freshman composition. If I took the job, I’d earn less per class than I’d earned as a teaching assistant. But Jody didn’t want me to wait tables while I waited for my literary career to take off. On the other hand, I wanted time to finish my new novel, which, in my mind, would secure a large enough advance for us to live on while I wrote my next one. Plus, Frank had given me a summer teaching position. In a thrilling yet disorienting way, I would occupy his office while he retreated for two months to Nantucket. So why would I leave Iowa for Texas?
Several reasons: my timidity, Jody’s wisdom, and a compromise. We’d spent three years in Iowa; now it was time to move on. The problem was, I’d received an offer from a Virginia university but declined after meeting its embittered faculty, and another university’s offer disappeared when its position’s funding did. Texas was my only remaining choice.
Returning to my car, I traipsed over dead leaves and intermittent patches of snow. Other than the sounds I made, the world was silent. Occasionally, I’d pause to listen. Then I’d move when wind bent the tree limbs until they creaked.
In town, I went to a restaurant called the Sanctuary and sat at the bar. The other stools and booths were empty. No one had dropped a coin into the jukebox. And as I drank, an emotional twilight softened my resistance. Defeated, I called Jody and told her to meet me.
When she arrived I smiled and said, “Okay, we’ll go.” Without removing her coat, she put her arms around my neck, kissed me, sat down, and said, “Now buy me a drink.”
The next day I told Frank about my decision. He said, “You’re doing the right thing. And I can promise you, you’ll be back.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I called SWT—at the time, this was the university’s acronym—and told the department chair I would arrive in August. Jody and I put our house on the market. And, surprisingly, People magazine planned to run a long, flattering review of Season’s End. Its editors dispatched a photographer to take my picture. In my office, I leaned, as requested, against my floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. I sat at my desk, held a pencil, and concentrated on a spiral-bound notebook. I looked down, as if staring into a grave; up, as if contemplating infinity. Then the photographer asked me to don a baseball cap. “I don’t own one,” I said. A baseball jersey? “No.” How about a bat, do you have a bat? “No,” I lied. I had a blond, thirty-two-inch Rawlings behind the office door. And I’d hidden a graphite-smudged baseball. Whenever my writing stalled, I’d lift it from the dictionary beside my typewriter, toss it overhead, and catch it until I’d emptied my mind so new sentences could fill it. I also owned an outfielder’s mitt, which, at times, I wore on my left hand as I scribbled with my right. But these were private talismans, so the photographer left Iowa City without a snapshot of me wearing a baseball costume, leaving me my dignity. But what might be forthcoming, according to Eric, was a hundred-thousand-dollar option for the novel’s film rights. And a foreign book scout’s synopsis hyped Season’s End as a “masterpiece of American fiction,” which, she believed, would “travel because it is fundamentally about universal themes and it is truely [sic] great writing.” I might have trusted her judgment had she’d spelled truly correctly. Yet, maybe Frank’s prophecy had been true: everything would be fine. I’d been a fool to worry.
Or maybe I hadn’t. Little, Brown arranged a brief, odd book “tour.” I would read in Dayton, Columbus, and Toledo, Ohio. Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Iowa City, Iowa. And Madison, Wisconsin. Also, the novel’s publication date coincided with major
league baseball’s opening day, meaning it would be released with fifty other “baseball” books. Little, Brown’s marketing strategy seemed to involve keeping the book a secret in large cities, and confusing reviewers by having it arrive for reviews along with Timmy of the Little League. My hope withered, my anxiety bloomed, and, not wanting to be caught in public looking for copies of my novel, I avoided Prairie Lights. Instead, I checked the university co-op’s bookstore, where no one knew me. In the center of the store, a round table no larger than a beach umbrella displayed important new books. As the table was impossible to ignore, nine out of every ten customers stopped, selected a book, studied its jacket, opened the back cover, glanced at the author’s photograph, flipped to the first page, read it, skimmed a few random pages, and, nine times out of ten, returned the book to its spot. I knew. I kept count as I loitered in the fiction section and imagined copies of Season’s End standing on the table, daring customers not to buy one. But the book failed to materialize. Copies had to be in storage, no? I considered inquiring, anonymously, about the novel’s availability, but repeatedly lost my nerve and bought, as a cowardly diversionary tactic, a dozen paperbacks I didn’t need. Finally, publication day arrived. Confident that I’d find the novel prominently displayed, I descended the stairs, turned into the center aisle, and saw a hardcover pyramid, twenty copies high, of—Jazz by Toni Morrison. Her first novel since she won the Pulitzer for Beloved, arguably the greatest American novel of the late twentieth century, and my novel had identical release dates. I now had to contend with Timmy and Toni. I imagined the table’s legs buckling under the weight of two hundred books, then I left the store without checking to see if Season’s End had been shelved, in alphabetical order, between novels by Martha Grimes and John Grisham.