weeks to finish this thing and it’s stressing me out. Really, I should be home by now, getting ready for classes. I’ve had to email the school and bow out of a couple of meetings already — an ailing father is pretty handy for that kind of thing, and as long as I’m back by the 23rd it’s no big deal.
But, Christ, I just want to be finished this. And I know I’m coming up to the most important part, but then I think: Jesus, Adam, we were both there. Do I really have to do this? Why am I even doing this?
You could just drop me a line, you know, and tell me to stop. Tell me you remember, and tell me that you understand what I am doing, and why. After which you might even consider telling me your reasons for doing what you did — and for the way you did it, the half-assed way you told my story. Your approach, I’m noticing as I go over your book for the fourth time, was practically not to tell it at all. That is, to tell it second-hand, in barely a couple of paragraphs. To just allude to it, really, as if it wasn’t even central to the plot.
In fact, I’m realizing as I reread the thing, it wasn’t.
I didn’t really notice that before — or else, on some level I guess I did, and that’s part of what pissed me off so much. I remembered Gord yelling panicked in the kitchen: It’s all about me! And how I laughed at his narcissism. Because it isn’t, obviously. But then again, of course, it is. I mean, you had taken the time to put me there — to preserve the twenty-year-old me in all my misery like a bug someone had closed the pages on, squashing it between the covers forever — and didn’t even end up paying me nearly enough attention. Same with the thing about the character’s — my character’s — mother. His mother who had died — who never even got to be alive in your version. Offhand. Sideline action. Just another squashed bug.
So I’m reading your book again, after all these other reads, and all of a sudden I find myself thinking Fuck! It’s not about me at all.
So what am I doing there?
What am I for?
Anyway, enough. Enough about you and your book that didn’t even do all that well or get all that much attention or even particularly good reviews, from what I can find on the internet. I was in the mall the other day to buy Gord a new toaster and stopped in at the Coles to see if they even carry it at this end of the country. Turns out they do. I found it tossed in a bin marked 60 percent off. I don’t know why but for months after I first read the thing it felt as if you were the most famous man on the planet — your face on buses and billboards, magazine covers; hitting the talk show circuit, yukking it up with Oprah; throwing the first pitch at Yankee Stadium. When, really, it was just a few reviews in handful of papers.
But it seemed to me like you had taken over the world.
08/15/09, 1:00 a.m.
OK. I know I have to start again, but I have been writing my ass off to get this thing finished and the closer I get to the end the more the process seems to slow itself down — and this is exactly the opposite of what I want to happen. Today I actually got up from the desk, wandered into the living room and tried to strike up a conversation with Gord — that’s how desperate I am. I just want it to be over now. I want to stop.
Gord, by the way, has been behaving himself beyond all expectation. Now that he doesn’t need as much help getting around and can brew his own tea and blacken his own toast I’ve heard nary a crutch-bash out of the guy. That was part of the reason I ambled from my room to see how he was doing — the silence had been deafening. It was afternoon talk show time of day and I imagined him gearing up to yell at me to come see the guy with tattoos all over his head, or the brother and sister who got married and defiantly produced a special-needs rainbow of offspring, or the