The news arrives almost by accident, like a bird fluttering into the apartment through an open window leaving a handful of pin feathers in its wake as it flits from room to room. My book has been rejected one more time, that collection of short stories titled
Papa on the Moon, where my heart and guts and soul remain wedged, ten long years of wrestling with the words that rest there, ever-hidden, still tucked inside a drawer. There is absolutely nothing wrong with rejection, which is as normal as going to the market for parsley and for some reason they are out of it.
This is different. I have begun to feel an unsettling undertow, that the world does not even read books by unknown writers any more, nothing more than articles and clickbait and the classics, nothing more than “best recommends” from Amazon, which is the elephant in the room any time you talk about books. These days, to court a small press with your masterpiece you cannot just submit, you must wait for months on end to pay to enter a contest and be the winner for them to publish you. I chalk this charade up to the waves of talent contests like the Voice, and all of those rags-to-riches reality shows that clog our screens. Winner winner, chicken dinner! (The origin of that chestnut is so telling. It comes from cockfighting, and what happens to the loser?
He is the dinner.)
I process the news as I always do, with a brief flare of anger and a teaspoon of resentment, some wandering around the rooms with my hands in my back packets, Bette Davis style. I am not fishing for encouragement, or plucky pats on the back to keep going.
I have been at this for thirty years now, and I would have quit a long, long time ago, if I could not chew through familiar moments like this one. There is some staring out the windows, the decision not to have a cocktail even though it is a good time for one. No, this one will be managed dead sober. I think of the greats who were rejected zillions of times, but the world was so very different then. They still had agents, and there was no internet. How would Salinger or Carver fare these days, as a nobody? I doubt very well.
Next, I think of the book itself. This raw, careful, surprising pile of pages that charts the awkward journey men take - first as boys who think their fathers make the very sun come up, to those lost years as young turks as we fumble in the dark of the world, to the day we come to understand our father is just a man, and terribly flawed on a good day, to that ultimate day when we stop running, we stop taking detours, we stop making excuses and eventually become fathers ourselves, by accident or intentionally. That day is what defines us. Everything before it is a messy prologue.
A book that won one of these small press contests includes
“a superhero team of murdered girls…and two exes and coworkers tasked with tracking a lost customer through a series of wormholes in their home-goods store.” So, the windows stare back at me and I scratch my head. This is what the world really wants? This is what the world needs?
For all I know, it is exactly what people want to read.
The processing moves on to the DIY punk rock phase. Throw out the directions. Fuck the institutions, especially the faux-sub culture ones. Alternative rock is just mainstream rock under a fabricated industry category. Three chords and the truth is all you need. This is as empowering as ever. Suddenly I am getting ready to walk in Rick Rubin’s footsteps, somehow putting out hit records from his dorm room. But I am not Rick Rubin, and this empty Moscow kitchen is not NYU.
The real rejection is understanding you are not really an American any more.
Everyone is asleep, but I know what N would tell me if she was awake. It is the same thing she always says and it is always right. “Just do this for your daughters. If they have your book on their shelf, that is all that matters. Everything else is bullshit.”
I watch them as they sleep, with those tiny breaths coming in and out. Hands, caught in perfect grace, frozen ballerina moves, pinkies extending into the darkness. I take a deep breath, smelling the remains of dinner in the air, good olive oil, garlic, fresh cracked pepper, the cold damp smell of stagnant mud puddles in the street coming in through the balcony windows, the low song of some frogs somewhere out there in the darkness.
I find sleep. A dream arrives, and I am in Tbilisi on a hill that looks out onto the city. For some reason I am alone, even though I have never been alone in Tbilisi between N and her extended family. The sky is magnificent and two great trees stand like a giant’s legs with no body. Out of nowhere, two elephants wander into the scene and I am grabbing for my Leica. It has black and white film in it. I cannot imagine how long the elephants will stand there as one slumps to the ground. Suddenly I am all thumbs, guessing at the exposure without even taking out my meter, staring at the familiar dials and having no idea what to do. I will take two or three shots now, quickly. Then, I will dig the meter out, and check the light but first I must try because they could leave at any second.
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