The Angry Czeck

Several years ago, I learned that the novelist Stephen Hunter would be lecturing at the new Memphis Public Library. I knew I had to attend because Mr. Hunter had penned the worst novel I had ever read from start to finish, Dirty White Boys.

That it was a novel my father recommended simply cemented my plans. Quickly, I logged onto eBay and purchased a first edition of Dirty White Boys. It arrived in the mail two days before its author arrived to The Bluff City. I intended to have my copy signed so that I might give this freshly autographed edition to my Dad on Father’s Day. In my imagination, I saw myself delivering it with a cavalier smirk.

The first paragraph of Dirty White Boys is a description of the antagonist’s enormous penis. It’s the most masterfully written portion of the novel. After that, the plot descends into a greasy trash heap of dopey shoot-outs, smarmy infidelities, noble last words, whiskey drinking, and an aggravating obsession with tattoos. Everybody in the novel was six-foot-four-inches tall. The motivation was simply “Doing what you gotta do.”

But the real crime of Dirty White Boys was its infuriating readability. Each chapter ended in an excruciating cliffhanger. You never knew who was going to get shot six times. You could never predict where the next punch in the face was coming from. Three times I hurled Mr. Hunter’s horrendous narrative against my bedroom wall in disgust, only to come crawling back to it minutes later, begging for more hairy-chested drama.

Mr. Hunter drew quite a crowd that afternoon at the Memphis Public Library. All ages. All genders. I sat amongst them smug in the knowledge of my superiority. Unlike them, you see, I knew Stephen Hunter was a hamfisted hack. While everyone else in the audience was hanging on a best-selling novelist’s every hackneyed word, I was simply distancing myself from his fraudulent brand of mediocrity. That, and I needed a gift for my Dad.

For three quarters of an hour, Mr. Hunter enthralled us with a reading from his new novel, Hot Springs, which was, of course, about hard-boiled gangsters. I shifted restlessly in my chair, the first edition of Dirty White Boys burning a shameful cattle brand on my lap. I finally perked a bit when the discussion was opened to questions.

There were the usual glowing queries: Where do you get your inspiration? Why did you become a storyteller? Who are your favorite authors? Bah! Why not ask a monkey for its favorite opera? Mr. Hunter, in a calm and quiet voice, gamely answered each question, as though they were posed to him for the very first time. I found myself begrudgingly awarding him a point.

Finally, the moderator announced that the next question would be Mr. Hunter’s last to answer, and I began gathering myself for the signing line. I’m lucky to have heard the question.

“Mr. Hunter, I love your books,” the woman said, “What makes you such a successful writer?”

Mr. Hunter paused momentarily, as if he were waiting to finish typing the answer inside his head.

“I know that my stories aren’t classic literature,” he said (and I nodded), “but the one thing that makes me different than 95% of all writers is that, at some point, I type ‘THE END’ on my manuscripts. Then I put it in an envelope and send it to my agent. Most writers can’t do it. They tinker and edit and after awhile the story gets stuck into a closet and that’s it. But a story can never be perfect. You just need the courage to finish it.”

You just need the courage to finish it.

***

Since then, I’ve finished two novels. The first was terrible. The second, only slightly better.

There are complications to writing a novel. You discover that you have responsibility for everything. You must be intimately familiar with your protagonist’s parents, for instance. And his grandparents. His aunts and his uncles and the nephew he hates. You must know precisely the condition of your character’s underwear, her breakfast cereal preference, and the circumstances in which she lost her virginity. You must sympathize with your characters’ politics and, whenever possible, you must share their humiliations.

It doesn’t stop there. In a novel, you are responsible for the weather. You shape the geography. The physics are yours to obey or break. Gravity is optional. It may rain bowling balls. Hookers are permitted to have upwards of forty breasts. Wherever the line is drawn in the sand, the one holding the stick is you. That can be an awesome burden.

They say write what you know, and yet twice I’ve written from the perspective of a woman. I can barely unclasp a bra. Women do things men do not, like start book clubs, insert tampons and exchange feelings. I know nothing of women, yet I decided that I can step in for God in a female’s complex universe.

The strings of thought easily unravel inside a novel. One by one, and then in big clumps, you drop the characteristics of your characters. Didn’t he wear glasses in Chapter Two? Why does she suddenly hate her mother in Chapter 10? This character was clearly gay in Chapter Three, but is now banging the farmer’s daughter in Chapter 16? When did he become straight?

They say the universe is constantly expanding, and will one day expand so far that there is nothing left of substance. In writing a novel, that dissipation happens much more rapidly, if you allow it. If you don’t concentrate, the character you started with in Chapter One simply stretches into something unrecognizable by Chapter 10. If you’re like me – a man with a real job, a wife, kids, a mortgage, two cars, and a yard full of weeds – you find that focusing on the details of a universe you created becomes an apocalyptic task.

Twice I have typed THE END. (Correction: I type the words FINIS because, well, I don’t know.) And both times, I have watched helplessly as the planet I created spun off its axis and tumbled from its orbit. I’ve heard its inhabitants scream for redemption and mercy. I’ve seen the bodies writhe in flame as my creation hurdles into the sun. I can only close my Word application and go to bed.

***

I dropped the copy of Dirty White Boys on the table before Stephen Hunter. “It’s a first edition,” I told him.

Mr. Hunter smiled politely. He didn’t give a rat’s ass. “How would you like me to sign it?” he asked.

“‘To the Dirtiest White Boy,’” I answered immediately. Without pause or change of expression, Mr. Hunter began to scribble, and for a second I was filled with doubt.

“I bet you’ve never heard that one before,” I said, manufacturing a brotherly lightness to my voice.

“Every day,” replied Mr. Hunter without a hint of humor. “Every day.”

He handed the volume back to me,  and I put it in my plastic bag. The writer of the world’s worst novel had just exposed me as a hack.



I spent the Christmas break of my 16th year playing Legend of Zelda. I can’t remember the details. (Swords. Elves. Waterfall. Some kind of princess.) I just remember the feeling when the game was finally beaten.

Despair.

I had devoted upwards to 8 hours a day as Link, the digital elfin warrior. His struggles were mine. His triumphs were mine. Imaginary sex with the princess was mine. And then, with one last depression of the NES system’s power button, that whole world was gone. Poof.

It seems just as shallow and trivial that the death of a television series should hold the same emotion. Like the fruit fly, a television show is born to die. It was the fate of Hill Street Blues and Cheers. It is the grim destiny of House, M.D. and Mad Men. Even the seemingly immortal The Simpsons will die – just a part of the Nielsen’s Circle of Life.

Mrs. Angry and I are married because of a television show, The X-Files. As it happened, she and I differed on nearly everything, yet we both shared an affinity for the paranormal investigations conducted by Agents Mulder and Scully. For nearly a decade, Mrs. Angry and I followed a litany of convoluted plots, artificially snappy banter, and frustrating red herrings. The truth, the show promised, was out there. And yet, upon the series’ conclusion, we were not treated to the truth. X-Files simply ended, with both it’s stars long bored with the scripts.

Somehow, inexplicably and improbably, Buffy The Vampire Slayer neatly filled the void. Unapologetically juvenile and a horrendous test for the suspension of disbelief, Buffy nonetheless engrossed us with breezy dialogue, diabolical plots, and an unwavering formula of providing one Big Bad per season. For most programs, when the child protagonists grow to become adults, it is the death blow for the series. Buffy only got stronger. When it came to and end, Mrs. Angry and I were quite lost.

There were other shows to follow. We remained loyal to E.R. long after the plots began to comically recycle themselves. We had our stints with 24, House M.D. and even Prison Break. Mrs. Angry got me to watch the last season of Will & Grace. While these programs harbored their own amusements, none proved to be a suitable replacement for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Worse, it appeared that the one-hour television drama was dying in favor of cheaper-to-produce reality TV.

That’s why Lost proved to be such a pleasant surprise. Reportedly the most expensive pilot ever produced, the series of Lost begins with a plane crash and somehow became more exciting after that. It didn’t matter how much time was spent developing a character – they were all expendable! You never knew which lives The Island would take, and you tended to remember fallen characters as being more interesting than they actually were (i.e. Boon).

You had to be physically fit to survive The Island. No one was safe from a fist fight. The chief protagonist, Jack, was clobbered more times in the head than I can count. Somebody was always getting smacked around. There are fewer fisticuffs on WWE. Generally, the Island’s currency was a big punch in the face.

Characters, especially Kate, spent a great deal of time getting captured and rescued. One’s choices for attire seemed limited to sweaty tank-tops or Dahrma Initiative coveralls. All the chicks were hot. All the men’s beards never got beyond Don Johnson thickness. Everybody seemed way too familiar with firearms. A man could grow a third testicle just by chewing on the tough-guy dialogue. (A woman could grow her first testicle, sadly.)

Now it’s gone.

Ridiculous or not, there is a hole in my schedule that didn’t exist for six years. “Maybe we’ll read more?” suggested Mrs. Angry. Read? Oh, God! Next we’ll be buying jazz CDs and constructing sail boats inside of glass bottles.

“Maybe The Gates will be good?” shrugged Mrs. Angry.

Just what I need: Tru Blood without nudity. (You suck, ABC!) No, there is no surrogate waiting in the wings to replace Lost. There is only emptiness and woe.

Is anybody watching V?

*

People make mistakes. A couple weeks ago, I parked my car, but I left it in neutral. Had a random passerby not alerted me, my 2001 Honda Accord would have rolled onto a busy street. Chances are excellent that somebody would have gotten hurt or even killed. It would have been my fault.

Everybody makes mistakes. Sometimes, one mistake is made but lots of people are blamed. Or nobody is blamed. For example, when the space shuttle Challenger exploded it took months and months before somebody decided that corroded “O-rings” were the culprit. Who made these O-rings? Who installed them? Why weren’t they properly checked? By the time we got to “O-rings,” we were just happy to have villain. It was O-rings! Let’s move on.

Sometimes, circumstances allow us to move on almost immediately. When the Valdez ran aground onto Prince William’s Sound and proceeded to spill 10 million gallons of oil onto Alaskan shores, we had an instant nemesis in Exxon. But oil companies – with their bland suits and boring hair cuts and made-for-CSPAN answers – make for dull antagonists, so we quickly moved on the tanker’s drunken captain, Joseph Hazelwood. He even had the bad-guy beard!

Bin Laden is to blame for 9/11. Adolph Hitler orchestrated the Holocaust. Jesse James broke Sandra Bullock’s heart. And there’s Joe Pesci. We like things clear cut. We need somebody to burn.

That’s why BP, Halliburton and Transocean are so mind-blowingly brilliant. They understand us better than anyone. Keep diverting the blame. Admit nothing! So long as they keep blaming each other for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, we can never actually have our evil-doer.

In fact, before long, we’ll start looking for our patsy. Already, we’re lining them up. We’re putting “federal regulators” up against the wall for failing in their inspections.* We’re blaming the Obama administration for giving the drilling a greenlight. We’re fingering Sarah Palin and her minions for “Drill Baby Drill.” If the generic suits of BP, Halliburton and Transocean refuse to cooperate with our thirst for vengeance, somebody will. We’ll make sure of it. They just don’t know it yet.

What we need is a good Hazelwood.

Yes! A Hazelwood! Like Lynndie England at Abu Ghraib. We don’t really want the men in power held accountable. Boh-RING! We want the lackeys. Give us the stooges! The yes men. The underlings. We don’t want trillion-dollar lawyers confusing use with their fancy legalisms. Just point us to the alcoholics, the uneducated, and the gullible. We’ll take care of them.

We won’t have to look very hard because you can bet BP, Halliburton and Transocean are doing the legwork for us. Already, in some cherry-paneled antechamber, the brokers of power are exchanging notes. Which engineers were going through a divorce? Who was on prescription medications? Who can, with a straight face, be labeled “disgruntled?” Best of all, which one of these guys has connections to Pakistan?

Soon, we will learn that the oil spill had nothing to do with a faulty “dead man” switch or poorly laid concrete. Instead, some investigative reporter will “discover” that the true demon behind the oil spill is nothing more than human error.

Oops.

* It is amusing to listen to proponents of deregulation blaming the regulators for the oil spill. The oil spill can’t be the fault of private enterprise! No way! Deregulation didn’t entice Enron to hijack electricity, or Lehman Brothers to to speculate in ridiculously shaky investments, or….wait…what was I talking about?

The Angry Czeck does not wax poetically about baseball.

That’s a policy of mine, one among few. Truth be told, I can’t stand any poetic waxing of baseball. Don’t give me Field of Dreams. It’s terrible, and it stars Kevin Costner.

And yet, I am in so much debt to baseball. It was baseball that bestowed that first chip on my shoulder. It was baseball that taught me to extract value from failure and loss. And it was baseball that pressed me to exceed my natural abilities (or lack thereof.)

Dammit. I just came dangerously close to waxing poetic.

We place the game of baseball on some kind of national pedestal because it has withstood the grand test of time. Our father’s played baseball. So did our grandfathers and their fathers and possibly their father’s too. My Dad played baseball, and even his most mundane recollections of the diamond captured my attention.

My first baseball team was The Eagles of the Pee Wee League. I arrived to the team without skill or even an intention to acquire skill. I spent more time attempting to catch pop flies inside my cap than to learn the basics of the game. That year, I managed to put the ball in play a total of once – an accidental happenstance of contact that placed the baseball four of five inches from the plate. I was unceremoniously thrown out at first. When I cheerfully related the event to my Dad, he simply shook his head and said, “But you were out.”

You were out. This wasn’t criticism; it was fact. Dad’s words were Revelation to me. Even then, at the age of eight, I saw how pathetic and silly I was. To accept something so menial – like being thrown at at first – as some kind of legitimate success was unacceptable. There was a startling surplus of boys in this world who were satisfied by becoming just another out in the box score, but I vowed not to be one of them.

Growing up playing baseball, I acknowledged that there were boys bigger, faster, and better than me. But I never accepted it. Smack me a few more ground balls, coach. Harder this time. Playing the game poorly eventually became a prospect that was far worse to me than losing. There are many who find that attitude to be counter-productive. But to me, a shoddily played win held less satisfaction than a splendidly executed loss.

There’s no smiling in baseball.

Because we were twins, my brother and I were always assigned to the same teams. On our 11th year, during the last game of the summer, the home plate umpire thought it cute to have my brother stand on his chest protector pad during his turn at bat. Like me, my brother was undersized and skinny for his age. I looked on furiously as the umpire clearly enjoyed his little joke.

It was the first time I wanted to hurt someone. I imagined my aluminum bat broken between the umpire’s eyes. I wanted to hear the parents who had laughed so merrily suddenly change their pitch to screams.

My brother, hesitant to disobey even the most disrespectful whims of an adult, grudgingly stood on the pad. You had better show him, I thought to myself. You had better not fail here. My brother delivered the first pitch to the center field fence, a double. He stood at second base glaring hatefully at the umpire, and I knew then that he and I shared the same, indignant fury. Yes, there is no crying in baseball. Because there is no place for it. You stand in the batters box, and pledge to make the pitcher pay for challenging you. You promise to make the third baseman regret scooting up a step.

And you damn sure remind a foolish umpire that you’re not here for the laughs.

Baseball is manhood’s herald to our boys. The best way to prevent a baseball from hitting you in the face is to catch it. To intervene. To take control. There is no victory in allowing the baseball to pass between your feet. Not when eight other boys are relying on you to stop it. The lesson is simple and elegant and perfect.

Eventually, as I grew older, my natural disabilities overwhelmed my desire to compete in baseball. As my teammates improved and advanced, I found myself falling further and further behind. It became personally demoralizing to play so poorly.  When I left the game, it was with relief.

Now my son plays baseball, and he is the youngest and smallest boy on the team. Last night, I saw a glint, a little spark of fire, as he stood in the batters box with his knees bent and his eyes firing an unfamiliar flash of laser beams. He wasn’t going to accept a beating. He was going to swing hard.

And that third baseman who crept forward a few steps was going to regret it.

**

DAD: Enjoy your waffles, children!

KIDS: MMMMM!

YOUNGEST: Dad! There’s a spider on the wall.

<pause>

YOUNGEST: Dad! There’s a spider –

DAD: Just pretend you don’t see it.

ELDEST: You must be really scared. Why aren’t you screaming?

DAD: I am. On the inside. Eat your waffles.

YOUNGEST: There’s a spider on the wall!

ELDEST: I’ll kill it!

DAD: With what?

ELDEST: With my fork!

DAD: Are you crazy? Here, use a paper towel.

ELDEST: Got it! Wait. Nope. I just got two legs.

DAD: WHAAAT?

ELDEST: See? They’re twitching.

DAD: Where’s the rest of it?

ELDEST: It flew away.

DAD: ….spiders don’t fly, son.

ELDEST: This one did.

DAD: We have to leave this house.

##