A Published Memoir Makes the Dream Real

 

Yes, I’ve gone and done it—I’ve published a memoir: Explaining It: A Life Between the Lines. One can find all the relevant information on Amazon

 Quick summary: paperback, 6x9 inches, 420 pages, 97 illustrations, $19.95.

 A word (okay, maybe more than one) about the title and subtitle. This completes what I informally call the “Explaining It” trilogy—though no cataloger will find such a bibliographic designation in the Library of Congress where all three of my books now reside. The first two volumes are:

 - Waiting for Someone to Explain It: The Rise of Contempt and Decline of Sense (2019) – a political meditation born of frustration and disillusionment.

- Explaining It to Someone: Learning from the Arts (2020) – a love letter to literature, music, and theater.

 This third installment, the memoir, turns the gaze more inward. I’ve always been a planner, someone who tries—despite the universe’s best camouflaging effort —to understand the forces that shape a life. The main title, Explaining It, reflects that tendency. The subtitle, A Life Between the Lines, is both a nod to my publishing career and an invitation to look beneath the surface—for the gaps and glimmers that define a life.

 The content outlines family history, much about my best friend and wife (Ann), the significant influence of mentors, the evolution of a professional life, and the adventures of boating, including living on a boat. It also explores my efforts as an octogenarian to navigate an increasingly unfamiliar world, finding solace in the arts.

 It even includes five short stories of mine. There was once a day when there were two distinct sections in a public library: fiction and non-fiction (including reference books): simple and direct.  We all knew what those terms meant. The Dewey Decimal System made it seem that life could easily be classified, organized, understood.   Now we live in a world where fiction masquerades as fact and fiction is becoming realized (especially if it is of dystopian nature). These short stories are not literal autobiography. But they carry the “redolence” of things I’ve seen, understood, or imagined and thus provide another dimension.

 Here’s the Table of Contents for the curious:

 

Now, let’s address the elephant in the bookshop: why write a memoir—and moreover, why publish it?

To the first question: if 90% of success is just showing up (thanks, Woody Allen), then perhaps writing a memoir is just what happens if you live long enough and still like putting metaphoric pen to paper. I quoted James Salter in my last book and again in this memoir: “There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real.”

So yes, I believe in writing things down. It's a form of accountability. It can give life to distant memories.

Memoir is not just a collection of dates and facts. It’s storytelling—sometimes exactly as remembered, often shaped by time, bias, or selective memory (sometimes mercifully so). Editing this book, I kept asking: why did I include that, and not this? Why that photo, and not another? The selection process was often, in a word (or two), serendipitous or even capricious, not unlike many decisions during one’s lifetime.

As to the second question—why publish it? I’m not under the illusion that there will be many sales.  I’m not “pushing” the book, no speaking engagements.  No signings at bookstores.  I'm not a household name and have never aspired to the status of “influencer.” (Who would have thought such a profession could exist?).  Friends and family will be curious and will no doubt comprise the main market.  Nonetheless, to me, not publishing this would be an “incomplete” grade from the University of Life.  After all, my profession was publishing and not to formally publish this would feel like leaving a job unfinished.

A few months from now a Kindle e-book edition will be available at a lower price for those now allergic to the printed book (or to the impact of inflation on the costs of creating a physical book).

From another publisher’s memoir, Robert Gottlieb’s The Avid Reader: “I attempt not to think about death, but there’s no avoiding the fact that we are all the pre-dead.” A cheerfully sobering phrase. Like Gottlieb, I try to stay forward-looking, doing the things I love with the people who matter. That’s the real subject of this memoir: not endings, but continuities.

After Explaining It To Someone: Learning from the Arts was published five years ago I wrote: “This might be the last book I write or the penultimate one, as I am thinking more about fiction and memoir perhaps in a couple of years if time and health are good to me…”

Well, here it is. Three years late, perhaps, but better that than never. Last or penultimate? Time will tell.

 

“Hitch”

 

From the Booknook Web Site

Is it possible to grow close to a person while never having met her, or even spoken to her? 

Yes, I had that kind of relationship with Kimberly Hitchens, the proprietor of Booknook.biz, a digital book conversion company, one she developed over the years. 

She (and her staff) was the midwife to my three books, which I am informally calling the “Explaining It” trilogy.  My final book is now being readied for printing, with an eBook to follow a few months later.  It is a memoir, Explaining It; A Life Between the Lines.  Details will follow in these pages soon.

Tragically, “Hitch” passed away while we were working on this project.

She felt like a best friend, despite the fact that we hadn't met.  Both of us were from the production side of publishing, but from different eras and our extensive emails over the years mused about the business.

Our digital epistolary relationship revealed her to be smart, idiosyncratic, and professional, dedicated as much to her staff as to her clients.  She knew her stuff and her enthusiasm for all aspects of pre-press production was clearly abundant.  Hitch was a joy to work with.

Ironically, the only time our relationship hit a speed bump was concerning this memoir.  Their new system was different than the one when I published Explaining It to Someone; Learning from the Arts five years earlier.

I don’t easily adapt to change and I incorrectly attributed my difficulty to perhaps they were using AI.  Hitch really took me to the woodshed on that.  Mea culpa I cried!

Although she did say AI technology might account for some increase in the volume of projects they were handling and they were slammed with work at the same time my book was submitted.  As a peace offering I said my project was not urgent so if she had to put it in a lower priority queue, I’d understand.

Her reply was long and detailed mostly about the ton of imaging and digital conversion software and AI’s impact there, revealing an instinctive deep knowledge about each, a foreign language to me.  But then, as far as my offer was concerned, here’s Hitch-speak at its finest:

In a billion years, Robert, I would NOT move you back in the queue! NONE of our repeat, much-loved real clients go there. NOPE, not happening. That's the very last thing I'd do.

All our repeat, solid, trade-pubbed clients are where they should be, queue-wise. Not to be a writing snob (moi?! NEVAH!), but our real author clients go where they should, and if I'm moving anybody down the queue--which I do, truly, try not to ever do; I do try to remain FIFO--it's the AI clients.

BUT, that's not to say that I don't truly appreciate your sentiment. I do. It's greatly appreciated.

Have a nice Mother's Day!  I mean...well, you know what I mean.

        H

That was the day before Mother’s Day, less than a month before she died.  I knew she had some health issues, but “NEVAH” anything life threatening.

So on Mother’s Day I replied:

Hitch.  That’s one hell of an email.  I used to have an employee, Carolyn, who started as my secretary but as soon as I got my hands on an Apple II in 1979 (and could do my own typing -80 WPM BTW-via a primitive word processor) I made her my administrative assistant.  Frankly, she tried to outwork me, always to the point of exhaustion— this is how the story relates to you.  I saw a cartoon in the New Yorker which I had framed to hang over her desk.  It pictured a young woman draped over her typewriter, clearly exhausted, with the caption “God, I love this job.”

Hitch, you protest too much.  You love your work.  It doesn’t get much better than that.

Remind me to buy a copy of YOUR memoir.  You are a spontaneous writer and the stories you could tell.

In any case, indeed Happy Mother’s Day.  Yours, Bob

Where she found the time for our personal, behind the scenes email, I have no idea.  There were so many over the years that did not necessarily relate to my projects.

Her last email to me was in reply:

Mon, May 12 at 11:02 AM

LOL...Bob:

Well, there are days when, yes, I do love my job--but there are the others, too.  Thanks for the kind words.

Ye Gods, the Apple II.  We started out a) Heathkit! (yowzers) and then b) the 8080 (which was really the 8088).  Yup, ye olden IBM 8088 which was...when, '81? Yes, I think that's right.

My Bob--My Robert, to whom I am wed--built our first few computers and that was the take-off for us. It helped me conquer the pink ghetto, in those early years. I was the only one that knew how to use the then-word-processor, which was WordStar and then CPM whatsits and I was the QUEEN of the first Lotus 123, which allowed some of us to conquer the world. Ah, the good old days.  Computers, in many ways, allowed women to break out.

LOL

Hitch

The reflective and self-congratulatory tone (albeit well deserved), was unusual for Hitch.  I replied, trying to do her one better, with my early knowledge of Visicalc (the precursor of Lotus 123) as well as PFS software which was an early word processing / data base software, each of these requiring dual floppy disk drives on the Apple II, and then my pride about being involved in the precursor of the Web, The Source, dialing up at 300 baud.   

I thought for sure she would laugh at that, but, uncharacteristically, I heard nothing.  I was stunned to learn that she passed away after a brief hospitalization on June 7.   

RIP Dear Hitch

 

 

Evocative Literary Works -- Avid Reader and The Personal Librarian

 

JP Morgan Library

 

While recently traveling, I read two different, interesting books: Robert Gottlieb’s Avid Reader and a historical novel, unusual as it was written by two people, Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, The Personal Librarian. 

 

The former was recommended to me in 2017 by a friend of my son Jonathan.  He knew I’d find it particularly relevant as Gottlieb was a leading trade publisher (very different than my publishing world though) and my literary interests.  Apparently, I put the book on my Amazon wish list, and finally was able to find a used copy through an Amazon partner.  It turned out to be a “withdrawn” copy from the Public Library District of Columbia, a labyrinth path to languish on my shelves until recently.  It’s also ironic as the protagonist of the other book, The Personal Librarian, was from the District of Columbia. At the core of each work are books and publishing.

 

My wife recommended the latter, an unusual tale about the remarkable woman, Bella da Costa Greene a person of color who passed for white and lived her life that way, dedicated to building the J.P Morgan Library, in effect becoming a partner in that endeavor with the most powerful man in the world at the time.  Although historically accurate, many of the personal details had to be imagined; hence, a work of historical fiction.

 

Both books were redolent of aspects of my past.  At one time I was nearly enrolled in Pratt’s Master of Library Science program but life had different plans for me, starting in publishing right out of college, which leads me to the more personal work (for me) Gottlieb’s memoir, Avid Reader. 

 

His career in trade publishing a little parallels mine in academic publishing, both of us compulsive workers, both loving our jobs which we considered a way of life more than working itself.  He was ten years older than I, quickly rising to Simon & Schuster’s editor-in-chief, then occupying that same position becoming president of Alfred A. Knopf.  He then served as the Editor of The New Yorker returning to Knopf as “editor ex officio.”

 

If our paths crossed at all it was at the American Bookseller’s Association or PEN.  He did not bother attending the Frankfurt Bookfair as I did.  My kind of publishing required me there to negotiate co-publishing rights with English publishers and develop the international marketing of our own publications.  Plenty of trade publishers sought out the Frankfurt Bookfair (for the parties alone), but Gottlieb was dedicated to the art of editing and had no time for the usual trade frivolities, such as those parties and long two martini lunches, etc.  He was an editor in the mold of Maxwell Perkins and Gordon Lish (with whom he worked). 

 

Among the literary luminaries he worked with was his own discovery (and Gottlieb was only 26 years old then), Joseph Heller, and his then titled novel “Catch 18.”  By the time it was being set in type, though, the best- selling Leon Uris was coming out with Mila 18 so Gottlieb and team scrambled for a new title, and it was suggested that “Catch-11”might be used but then there was the fear that it would be confused with the film Ocean’s 11. Heller suggested 14 but Gottlieb considered it “flavorless” and with time growing short, spent a sleepless night and finally came up with Catch-22.  He called Heller: ‘”Joe, I’ve got it! Twenty-two! It’s even funnier than eighteen!’ Obviously the notion that one number was funnier than another number was a classic example of self-delusion, but we wanted to be deluded.”

 

 

But when I read that he considered Heller’s Something Happened one of the greatest novels of its time (I agree), it was then I resolved to write him upon completion of his autobiography to say how much I admired his work and his work ethic.  What are the odds that a book I bought years ago, and just recently picked up to read, should be written by someone who passed away while I was reading it?  I was heartbroken about missing the opportunity. He had an uncanny ability to communicate his life in such a personal voice.  I feel as if he was talking to me.  It is a rare autobiography which lacks self-censorship (the greatest fault of my own memoir in process), vital, a man who loved, loved what he did.

 

 

My old, beaten clothbound copy of Something Happened has followed us from house to house in Connecticut and now Florida.  Perhaps the time has come to put it on my “to be read (again)” list, a list that simply is like the expanding universe.

 

What a life and career.  He was indeed an avid reader as a kid. It helps that he was brilliant, and a quintessential New Yorker, who took advantage of all the cultural opportunities of the city.  In fact, in his later years became involved in the world of ballet, befriending Lincoln Kirstein and George Balanchine.  He became a ballet critic and he thought his attraction to the art was because it is all about movement, a world of difference from his literary life.  My wife’s favorite ballet company of the last 20 years has been the Miami City Ballet and its very continued existence was due to Gottlieb’s efforts and his friendship with Edward Villella, the company’s founder (Gottlieb maintained a home in Miami as well as an apartment in Paris).

 

He sometimes would pull all-nighters on behalf of his authors to read their new works or to edit ones submitted for publishing. He took no vacations and long holiday weekends meant he could get more work done.

 

Again comparing my own publishing life, I always felt that the more I got done, the more there was to do.  My family knew my favorite working day of the week was Mondays.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

Gottlieb said "I hated dinners out. Restaurants didn’t appeal to me. I didn’t go to movies or parties, play sports or watch sports. I literally didn’t know how to turn on the TV."  He saw himself in service of the author; authors, coworkers and friends were all part of his extended family.  He did have a family, married twice, the second marriage the charm (as was mine), to Maria Tucci the actress.

 

As I was finishing the book, he died at the age at 92.  I lamented his death and the lost opportunity of writing to him.  In his own voice, he makes a good point though: “I attempt not to think about death, but there’s no avoiding the fact that we are all the pre-dead.  I try not to brood about my lessening, physical forces, and try to avoid what I’m sure is the number one killer: stress. Luckily, I don’t use up psychic energy and living in regret. What’s the point? Or in worrying about the future. Why encourage anxiety ? The present is hard enough.”

 

Speaking of anxiety, indeed, can one imagine the day-to-day grind of living a life of self-imposed duplicity, such as the one portrayed in The Personal Librarian? 

 

Bryan daily eagle and pilot 28 Feb 1913

 

This work of historical fiction by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray is about Belle da Costa Greene’s personal and professional life. As J. P. Morgan's “personal” librarian, she helped build the incredible J.P. Morgan Library, JPM, many years her elder, never realized she was black.  She passed for white and that's how she had to lead her life, to protect her position, one of enormous responsibility as she represented JPM at auctions, operating completely autonomously.  It was a disadvantage enough being a woman in that world of antiquarian collecting and preservation.  It was also the way she protected her mother and siblings, who she supported throughout her life.  One can imagine the ensuing complications and her perpetual fear of being “outted.” 

 

Passing for white estranged her from her father, Richard Theodore Greener, Harvard College's first Black graduate.  He became Dean of Howard University’s Law School and a tireless advocate of equal rights during the Reconstruction.  This became a schism in his family.  His wife wanted her and her children to have the benefits of being thought of as white, fabricating a tale about Portuguese lineage and changing their name from Greener to Greene to disassociate them from him.

 

Belle finally found a way to embrace her father’s teachings and at the same time creating a research library second to none when, after JP Morgan’s death, she convinced his son Jack to make the library a gift to New York City.  She thought he could approve, putting these treasures indirectly in the hands of the people.

 

This gave her some closure and it took the writing team of the experienced novelist, Marie Benedict, and a bestselling writer, Victoria Christopher Murray to imagine the complete tale.  In the process, they became best friends and the joy they shared researching and writing shows on every page.

 

Avid Reader and The Personal Librarian, as different as they are, share that commonality, the joy of books. That was my world and how lucky I was to be a small part of it.