Tales of Accidental Genius (15 page)

The Stories Behind the Stories

I
'VE BEEN LOOKING FORWARD
to writing this P.S. Section, as it gives me a chance to thank you for reading my latest collection. If this is our first book together (reading is a collaboration with the author after all), then welcome—if not, then welcome back; in these stories are all the things that have happened to me since we last met.

As you now know, this collection is about how people accidentally commit acts of what I shall call
genius.
This term is usually reserved for those who invent something or cure a disease or perhaps discover things about the universe using imagination, numbers, and a piece of chalk, the way Albert Einstein did during a lecture at Oxford in 1931 when he drew a model on a blackboard to illustrate his theory about how the universe was expanding and how old (or young) it might be. The blackboard is now part of the collection at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford. I took my daughter to see it in 2009, but all we could think about was the ice-cream truck outside.

The stories in this book, however, are concerned with the manifestation of
genius
through acts of kindness and feelings of compassion for others, and the characters in these stories serve but are not subservient. Through a change in perspective, their generosity has freed them from the narrow, limiting idea of a “self,” and consequently the fear of death attached to the illusion of a fixed identity. This truly special way of seeing the world is perhaps what T. S. Eliot was considering when he wrote, “The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.” And of course, so much of T. S. Eliot's wisdom in
Four Quartets
is drawn from Asia, where the last story in the collection just happens to be set.

One of my favorite ideas on the subject of wholeheartedness comes from Jiddu Krishnamurti, who suggested that one doesn't find love—one simply removes everything from one's life that
isn't
love. This idea has much in
common with Lao Tzu's “Wu Wei,” which again offers a subtle, tacit exploration of wholeheartedness. (I suggest reading the Stephen Mitchell translation.)

I have a feeling that these stories were also indirectly influenced by Immanuel Kant's idea of universalizability, from his “categorical imperative.” Writing around 1785, Kant said, “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”

In other words, learn to observe your daily behavior. Then ask yourself: if everyone behaved the way I am now under similar circumstances—would this be a world I want to live in?

Although I was not consciously thinking about these concepts or quotes when I wrote the stories in this collection, the ideas in this book have too much in common with them for there not to be some kind of relationship. That's why I agree with other writers who've said that an author is only as good as the work he or she is reading.

You may have also picked up on the theme of friendship between young people and the elderly. This book is dedicated to my writing mentor and friend, Barbara Wersba, who was born in Chicago in 1932. She was the first person to publish my fiction and poetry in book form—a limited print run of two hundred copies, which are now lost. Barbara also taught me how to line-edit, and continued to offer advice as I developed as an author, encountering new problems with each book.

Once, I telephoned Barbara in the evening to say how I had spent an entire day rewriting a single paragraph. “You're not special,” she told me. “Sometimes I spend months on a single sentence.”

She was also the first to share with me the idea that “authors don't finish books—they abandon them.”

Barbara introduced me to the life and work of Janet Frame, who I quickly came to revere:

“In authorship, the author is not the tree scattering his books like leaves; the books are the tree; the author is shed, blown away, dies to make compost for other leaves and the other trees. . . .”

From Janet Frame's posthumously published
In the Memorial Room

Most of Barbara's books are currently out of print, so when I offered to help get some back into bookstores, she politely refused, admitting, “I'm no longer the person who wrote those books, and so they're not mine anymore.”

Last year, as I was helping Barbara pack up her things following the reluctant but necessary sale of her house in Sag Harbor, she said that a box recently discovered in the attic containing newspaper reviews of her books had over the years turned to dust. “Our lives are like smoke,” she went on to say over lunch. “They briefly have a form, and then . . . poof! Nothing.”

Credit for inspiring “The Goldfish” must also go to Barbara. Over another long lunch, this time at her beloved American Hotel, I was telling her about the deaths of Tinks and Tinkerbell (our pet fish), and describing how I had lifted them out of the tank with a soupspoon, as my wife changed into something
black and our daughter prepared death shrouds (squares of Kleenex). After lunch, Barbara ordered me to immediately go home and write a story about an old man whose only friend in the world happens to be a goldfish. Barbara currently lives at the Lilian Booth Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey, as she is not only a writer but also worked as an actress and playwright.

To tell you a little more about “The Goldfish”: I spent my early teenage years in a small Northamptonshire town called Brackley, where I used to wake up at 5:30
A.M.
six days a week to deliver newspapers. One of my stops was an independent living community called Godwin Court. The halls reeked of pipe smoke and mothballs, and as I put the newspapers into the letterboxes, I could often hear the residents behind the doors, awake and waiting for me to bring their morning news. Sometimes, around Christmas, the residents would open the door at my approach and offer some tea or a bar of chocolate. One man I was friendly with in particular had flown a Spitfire during World War II and still wore the long moustache pilots became known for at that time. He was always immaculate in his dress, with a starched button-down shirt, cravat, cardigan, slacks, and heavy brogues.

This past summer, twenty-five years later, I returned to that town and walked my old paper route, stopping at Godwin Court. As I was marveling at how it hadn't changed in appearance, an elderly resident came out to say hello, along with her cat. I told her my story, and explained that I was visiting from my home now in New York City. Then she told me hers.

As far as I can remember, she was born in 1928, a few miles outside the town. In 1960, she met an American airman, from the nearby American Air Force base (where I later worked for several years), and fell in love with him. She said that it was a surprise because she thought that her chance to marry had passed. When her beloved was called back to the United States in the mid-1960s, she accompanied him, and they lived in New Hampshire from about 1966 to 2013. I was surprised to learn that most of her life had been spent in the United States. When I asked why she returned to the United Kingdom (I presumed her husband had passed away), she told me that she wanted to be buried beside her parents in the town where she was born. She said she missed New Hampshire so much, and all her friends and her house, but felt she had only a short time to live, and wanted to be in a place that remembered her. I didn't ask, but I did wonder what was going to happen to the cat.

I
N 2013
, I was approached by executives representing Waldorf Astoria resorts to write a short story set in one of their hotels. The only condition was that I cast a woman as the main character, as they had already selected a Hollywood actress to be photographed as the protagonist.

This commission was a lot of fun to work on, as I've always loved lounging around in luxury hotels, plus the executives in charge gave me creative carte blanche. I think big business working with writers of any kind is marvelous—and any company that values short stories enough to include them in an international marketing campaign deserves respect from the literary establishment, which I feel often undervalues the shorter form.

The version in
this
collection, however, is slightly different from the one I composed for the Waldorf Astoria campaign. It's not a better story (nor a worse one I hope); it's just different. I think you get to a point, after extensive rewriting, where a story is basically the best work you can do at that time.

There are countless variations of any single story, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. We all might do well to give up the idea of that one perfect piece because, thankfully, in this world there is no perfect anything.

T
HE
C
HINESE FABLE
in this collection was by far the hardest piece of fiction I've ever written.

Although writing is certainly a solitary profession (I spend sixteen hours a week in total silence if I'm lucky), the presence of “Golden Helper II” is very much a team effort.

The initial problem with “Golden Helper II” was that I didn't know enough about China or Chinese culture or Mandarin to write with confidence. I knew I wanted to write a fable set in the country of my ancestors, but did not realize how much
teamwork
would go into it. Now, years later, with “Golden Helper II” completed (or “abandoned,” as Barbara might say), I can admit that much of the story is directly inspired by my recent travels through China (made possible by my dear friend and editor, Peng Lun, of the publishing house Shanghai 99); by weekly visits to Chinatown (Manhattan), and Flushing (Queens); by a documentary on visually impaired children in rural China by filmmaker Carol Liu (who has since become a friend and collaborator); by my ongoing study of Northern Chinese martial arts with David Kaplan; by my wife's teachings on meditation and mindfulness; by Stephen Mitchell's translation of the
Tao Te Ching
; by Peter Hessler's marvelous book
Country Driving: A Journey from Farm to Factory
; by all the strange videos on YouTube of Chinese pop music; Zach Johnson, Guillaume and Delphine Gauvain, and Li Chen of the Bethel orphanage for visually impaired children (see separate note below); by my foolish attempt to learn Mandarin; and by my mysterious Cantonese
great-grandfather, about whom we know nothing except what you see in this photograph.

Photo courtesy of the author.

“Golden Helper II” is the sum of these parts, explored in a fashion I have long admired.

Translator of “Golden Helper II”

Our brilliant translator, Li Chen (Rebecca), was born in 1991 and grew up in the Guizhou Province of China. At sixteen years old, Ms. Li found herself at Bethel (China's first orphanage for children who are visually impaired).