Drunken Angel (9781936740062) (43 page)

When the door opened, there he was, exactly as he looked in history books. Now in his late seventies, he was still spry, sharp, imposing.

“Mr. Rosset,” I said humbly.

“Come in, come in,” he said, smiling.

We all sat around in the spacious loft living room, which held a pool table, comfortable sofa, and deep chairs. On the walls hung original art by Henry Miller and a blowup of a photo of Barney seated with his most famous author, Samuel Beckett. Scores of binders contained correspondence with Grove Press authors, some of the most famous in world literature. Barney showed me letters from Maurice Girodias, publisher of Olympia Press in Paris, from
Miller, from Beckett. He told me about hosting Genet in his home. Genet, an inveterate thief, notorious for stealing from his friends, stole from Barney as well. Barney said he didn't mind; Genet was his author and a great one. He spoke fondly of making a film called
Moonstone
, with Normal Mailer directing. Said it was one of the most interesting projects he'd ever participated in—everything was completely improvised.

As Barney fielded my awestruck questions about his relations with Samuel Beckett and Henry Miller, Lana and Astrid, who had in common having worked at one time or another as kindergarten teachers, shared their experiences. They looked beautiful and happy on the sofa, deep in conversation. I felt blessed.

Barney described how Beckett was a kind of saint, in his way, one of the kindest men he had ever met, but also so steeled in his resolve to preserve the original vision of his work that he would not permit anyone to alter his text. Told me about the film Beckett had made with Buster Keaton, a copy of which Barney gave me, signed. And he spoke about Henry Miller's initial reluctance to let him issue
Tropic of Cancer
in the United States, fearing the backlash. “But that was going to come, of course. I knew that.” Barney grinned. “I knew that the controversy would blow him up into a public figure beyond anything he could imagine. Miller didn't like to draw fire to himself. But I was persistent, and when
Tropic of Cancer
was published, it became a cause célèbre because of the Supreme Court. Miller's reputation shot through the roof and with a happy outcome. He became a rich legend.” Barney laughed. “And what's wrong with that?”

In Barney's estimation, though, Miller had been a far better writer in his Paris years, before he began to dabble in Eastern religion. The change occurred after Miller settled at Big Sur. His Buddhist delvings had weakened his once razor-sharp sense of humor and
language, his eye for rendering people and experience with sometimes cruel accuracy. Buddhism, thought Barney, had made Miller somewhat sloppy as an artist and didactically opinionated. The same, he thought, went for Kerouac, and for Ginsberg too.

 

Before leaving New York, we visited once more with Barney, who has an inexhaustible passion for literature and ideas, an unquenchable questing belief in the importance of writers, the mission of writing. His wife, Astrid, shares this, and together they still edit the
Evergreen Review
in an online version. In time, Barney and I would co-edit
The Outlaw Bible of American Literature
—a volume that reflects, across generations, our conjoined faith in those books that go against the grain with artistry and daring.
Outlaw
was reviewed on the front cover of the
New York Times Book Review
—unprecedented for a compilation of underground and for the most part unknown writers.

Barney asked me: “Have you ever been involved in a tragic love affair?” And proceeded to tell me about his once fierce love for the abstract expressionist painter Joan Mitchell, how he had followed her to Paris, where she introduced him to the avant-garde and suggested that he go see an odd little play running at that time in a small theater and causing something of a stir called
Waiting for Godot
, authored by an Irishman named Samuel Beckett. He went. The rest is history.

I, in turn, told the story of my shattering love affair with Anna during the Lebanon war, my Israeli Army service in Gaza, the way our adultery brought us each to the brink of ruin. Barney said: “That's a terrific story. You ought to write that someday.” Four years later, with Barney's words still ringing in my soul, I did. Little, Brown published it as a novel titled
Matches
.

WHEN
JEW BOY
WAS PUBLISHED IN NOVEMBER 2000, the publisher sent a box of twenty copies to my home. I held the first copy in my hands—a sleek, elegant hardcover edition of 420 pages with back-cover quotes from Hubert Selby Jr., Howard Fast, and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, among others.

Hubert Selby Jr.'s quote thrilled me. Not so much for what he said but simply the fact of his having said anything at all. When Fred had asked for a wish list of authors to approach for quotes, Selby Jr.'s name headed my list. Author of
Last Exit to Brooklyn
, a novel published by Barney Rosset which I regard as the greatest masterpiece of the postwar era, Hubert had been a literary hero since before my teens, when I had first read
Last Exit
in the Bronx. The impact of his book remains with me to this day. More than any other book, it confirmed my decision to write; more than any other writer, more than Kerouac, Hemingway, Wolfe, Selby wrote about life in a way I could recognize my own experience in. After reading
Last Exit
, I thought, if a writer could reveal life to that depth and
degree of rawness, then I wanted in. It was the same with Diane Arbus's photographs, the short stories of Isaac Babel and Tadeusz Borowski, the paintings of Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning, the plays of Samuel Beckett, and the poetry of Sylvia Plath. Each shocked me into an awareness of the possibilities of self-expression, the extreme lengths that one could go to give identity a voice.

Fred Jordan wrote to Hubert Selby and sent him a copy of my book. A letter returned with a rave quote. It also bore his phone number.

Did Fred think that Hubert would mind if I called to thank him?

“Knowing Cubby,” said Fred, “I'm sure he'd love it.”

“Cubby?”

“That's what friends call him.”

I phoned that night to LA. A soft, raspy, Brooklyn-inflected voice answered—frail but infused with steel.

I introduced myself, and he said: “Sure. I know who you are. That was some book. Thank you for
Jew Boy
. The stuff about the mother knocked me out. I mean, I know what you went through. Had a similar kind of thing.”

“That means a lot to me.”

“Can I ask you, something, Alan?”

“Sir. Anything.”

He chuckled. “No sirs here. Just Cubby. All my friends call me Cubby. You too, since we're now friends, because anyone wrote a book that good, that honest, I call friend. So, here's my question. Are you by any chance involved in twelve-step programs?”

“I am. I've got ten years clean and sober.”

“I thought so. You can usually tell. There's a certain lingo. And all that stuff in the chapter about Carl Little Crow. I got a real kick outta that. Well, uh, I'm also in the program.”

Floored, I said: “You're kidding!”

“Nah. I kid you not. Got double-digit years.”

“Cubby, I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around this. You're my hero, man. Your quote's on the back of my book. And now I find out that my hero is also in recovery? That's nuts!”

“What are the odds?” He laughed.

“What are the odds,” I agreed.

There are moments in recovery when the circle of one's life opens out into some vast expanse of possibility beyond anything imaginable, when the larger pictures gel for just an instant, held in your heart and mind with reverent gratitude, glimpses of God, of eternity, of some transcendent design in which the events and circumstances of our lives are but signposts, signifiers, clues, crumbs dropped on the forest floor leading to vistas of ultimate freedom, and this was such a moment, when everything seemed to click and round out, from Old Ray to Fred to Barney to Hubert Selby Jr.

 

Fromm International's publicist produced a book tour that took me from San Francisco to Palo Alto, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Seattle, Detroit, and New York. When Fred asked my hotel preference for the New York leg of the trip, my choice was obvious: the Chelsea.

“I should have known you'd ask for that. All my best authors stay there,” he said.

Since the age of sixteen, when I first stood outside its doors reading the wall-mounted plaques honoring its most famed author-residents, from Dylan Thomas to Thomas Wolfe, I had fantasized that someday, perhaps, I too would be among the authors to reside at the Chelsea, engaged in literary work. Fred was of an era, unlike now, that treated authors with deference, as though they yet mattered. He had limos sent to transport me to and from each airport and my hotels.

I rode my first limo from LAX to Wilshire Boulevard, where I was booked to read in the Jewish Community Library. My publicist had advised me that my audience would consist, largely, of Holocaust survivors and their children. It had occurred to me that a nakedly honest portrait of my particular experience might incite survivors and their children against me. I knew it was possible that by daring to tell my particular truth in such harsh detail I opened myself to charges of betrayal.

In fact, the audiences thanked me for my frankness. Some of the Second Generationers said that though my particular experience appeared to represent the extreme edge of the curve, still,
Jew Boy
accurately brushed up against their own experiences. They liked that I had presented my upbringing without blame, even, at times, with humor, and they hailed
Jew Boy
as a breakthrough work of Second Generation Lit, a still relatively new genre. Because I shared myself as I am, others found light for their own dark corners.

The honesty of
Jew Boy
reaped other, unsuspected benefits. At one of the readings a Latina social worker whose client base was chiefly Cambodian, children of the survivors of the Khmer Rouge genocide under Pol Pot, said that
Jew Boy
gave her the first real insight into the traumatized Cambodians, the complex fabric of their family life. “Your book will benefit another community that it was not intended for,” she said. “I came tonight to tell you that.”

My deep wish to be of service through my writing had come true.

 

I spoke to large appreciative audiences at the Seattle Book Fair and the Detroit Jewish Book Fair. In New York, in residence at the Chelsea Hotel, met with the hotel manager in his office and presented him with inscribed copies of
Jew Boy
and
The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry
. He very ceremoniously opened a special
cabinet and stood my book alongside autographed copies of books by Arthur Miller, Thomas Wolfe, Dylan Thomas. The Bronx kid who grew up feeling doomed as an outsider, had once gawked at this hotel from the street, now had books stored within its innermost heart.

NOW ENSUED ONE OF THE STRANGEST PERIODS OF my life.
Jew Boy
received splendid reviews. Editions appeared in American paperback and British paperback. Holland bought it and issued
Jew Boy
in a Dutch translation. In a front-page review in the
San Francisco Chronicle
, James Sullivan called it “a classic American coming of age story.” I now had more “game” and money than I'd ever known before. In 12-step meetings, I became a kind of hero. People all over the world contacted me. I flew to England on a book tour. In San Francisco, my profile jumped into prominence and I was stopped on the street, even asked for autographs. I was a “known” author. Fred Jordan and Barney Rosset teamed up to nominate me for membership in PEN American, the authors' organization that included among its ranks almost every major American writer.

In response to all this success, my sponsor smiled wryly and said: “Do you know what's even harder for an alcoholic to deal with than failure?”

“No, what's that?”

“Success.”

“Leave it to you to piss on my parade.”

 

One day, I encountered an exquisite, heart-stopping woman in her thirties, blonde, blue-eyed, with a face like Candice Bergen and a figure like Joey Heatherton: Pia.

She was new in the building, riding the elevator to the third floor. Not one word passed between us and I fell in love with her. By the way she smiled at me as she exited I knew that I had made an impression on her as well. Even in that first brief wordless exchange, there was palpable fire between us.

As Lana slept beside me, I lay awake thinking of Pia. Lived for our chance encounters. She was a Vargas girl stepped out of the pages of
Playboy
, circa 1967. Wore her blonde hair drawn back in big Viking knots, stood in a miniskirt on tall thigh-high heeled boots, body sheathed in a stretch pullover that contoured her breasts like plastic injection molding. Pia. Just the sound of her name made me tumescent. Filliped me from this dimension through the walls into her room, where I nailed her pink-white body to the mattress with ruthless excited thrusts. My libido was turning into a cheap paperback. I wrote my sexual narratives in hack prose.

Just by existing in proximity to me, Pia made me see that I needed out of my life with Lana, which had grown into a well-furnished rut. The way Pia smiled at me. Lust. Amusement. Tenderness. Vitality. By contrast, Lana returned home from kindergarten depleted, sexless. We were fast becoming like an old couple. Soon we'd be sleeping in separate beds. When we made love, we paused to chat, exchange jokes and pleasantries, but then repaired to our separate solitudes where we each grunted and sweated our way to orgasm without any real dance to it. And when we finished we
forgot about each other altogether, turning away on a shoulder or rising and going to another room. We were not even good friends anymore. Barely spoke. We were each other's loneliness Band-Aid.