In a few weeks I will submit my final edit of the above book which is an elegy and homage to my deceased wife, Nina. It is a moment of loose ends, checking the cover of the book as well as the back cover spiel by editor, David Herrle, who was also the consulting editor to what is now my eighth book. When all is completed it will go to the publisher’s editor for her final input and then back again to me to read once more and end tinkering with words and punctuation. Hopefully it goes to the printer and sometime in late September it will be published.
By that time I will have consulted with Bobbie Crawford, consultant, of Nurture Your Book, a publicist. We have agreed upon a plan to market the book. I have begun to garner all my literary contacts, past reviewers, friends, connections so that I can market it by myself as well. I will have what they call a sell sheet to email to potential readers. Essentially I just want to collect a few good reviews. I am not that interested in the royalty aspect as I am in having the book read. At this time in my life I am only concerned with sharing, my generativity, to cite Erik Erikson, as a human being. At 79 money means dreck.
I have, on average, written a book every 2 or 3 years. It is this accomplishment that I am proud of, given that I started at 65 on this streak. Recently I had a cinema-photographer interview me for a video geared to You Tube. Part of that taping will be used to advertise my latest book, perhaps no more than 2 or 3 minutes. The experience allowed me to wax about my life, how I came to writing — pain; my low grade depression all through high school; my depressive mother, my nincompoop father; growing up lower middle class poor in housing projects. A sad memory is my parents buying what was essentially porch furniture and my mother buying material to make covers for the chairs and couch; that kind of poor.
Since I am not writing this essay in one sitting, it will wander, and wander is good, wander makes for the unconscious to speak by way of associations. It is 7:01 PM, the sky is darkening, it is warm outside this summer day, now September third. It was this week I dreaded as a teacher, the going back to school, putting on the stern harness of the teacher once again, smelling the new varnish on the gym floors. When I think of all the terms I lived in three decades, I sense the control involved. I felt controlled, the one feeling I have always detested. I have a rebellious streak in me, that part of my passive-aggressive behavior which explodes on rare occasion. I was a very controlled child, my mother accomplishing that with not raising one hand to me; it was a manipulation of the atmosphere surrounding her and me. [See “Mortise and Tenon”in Down to a Sunless Sea discussed below.]Sleep in peace, mom. You did the best you could, although it was not good enough.
The literary conceit of Nina’s Memori Mori is to view myself as an artifact. By writing about myself in relation to Nina, the thought was that I could shed some light upon her. Perhaps, I must admit, it was an avoidance about having to deal directly with the impact of Nina. And it was a subtle narcissism as well, for it is easy to write about myself, literary ham that I am, than it is to compose thoughts and reactions to the significant other. It was a variant on a self-lie; but who cares, for no one is hurt, no one dies, no one is sold into slavery. The elegy was an investigation into who I was, the song of my entire life. I lifted parts and sections of other works, I reconnoitered here and there for literary scraps and set them into formations and marched en masse to the sound of a different drummer. Like a snowball, I used good packing to make it cohere. The reader doesn’t know, the reader doesn’t care. It is first impact that carries the day. I intend to lie to you with all the artifice and skill I have.
My publicist, consulting editor and publisher editor are of the same mind, telling me that this book is probably the best of my “career.” It is flattering to hear all this but I have no career, for I am just a scribbler. An autodidact from day one about fifty years ago, I just began writing. I spent years writing without recognition but out of a need, a drive to express something of myself before I died. Like the cartoon figure of Kilroy that GIs left on tanks and walls across Europe, I am simply saying that I was here, the usual pomposity of the human being.
The classic trouble with being self-taught, the autodidact, it seems to me is that one repeats all the same writing errors that could have been avoided with some instruction. Perhaps the good thing about being an autodidact is that in not knowing the rules, you break the rules; and that reminds me of Welles. He didn’t know the rules of film-making, for he had the skills of a radio man. By breaking the rules, he made newer rules, transcendent ones. I found my voice, my so-called style after many, many revisions, remembering how I worked over a paragraph maybe 20 times in a story and it still was not satisfactory. An editor at the New Yorker encouraged me by saying that, at least, he saw the care I revealed in my writing. I had nothing to really say except a gargled thought of small dimension and I worked it over laboriously thinking that rewriting might lead to something worthwhile. It did not. I produced a mouse. A lapidary does not make a diamond.
I remember taking a self vow. I promised myself that I would publish a book of short stories before I died. Years, years and years later after having a small collection of published stories under my belt, after 30 years! I self-published a collection of short stories, Down to a Sunless Sea. Tracy -Jane Newton, editor, wrote: “Mathias B. Freese has the ability, without mawkishness or sentimentality, to delve into the darkest struggle of life. So many things in this short story collection are resonant of his own troubled youth and his experiences as a clinical social worker, which is evident through his vivid characterizations and adept understanding of the horrors impaired human minds can endure. Due to his stimulating, thought-provoking writing style, one will not be able to resist feeling involved or indeed questioning one’s own morals.” So, I was anointed.
