Drunken Angel (9781936740062)

by Kaufman, Alan

  “Yes, you will,” she said. “You’ll see. You have a great Higher Power. Have faith. You’ve done all you can. It’s up to God now.”

  I made it to midnight by attending as many 12-step meetings as I could pack in. But there was still the night. I barely slept. By morning was so spent that when I did doze I fell into comatose unconsciousness. But when I awoke, despite my grogginess, I forced myself to fashion a meditation spot out of some sofa pillows and sat for as long as I could. For I knew that it’s in times like these that you need your program most. As I prayed I felt a sense of equanimity flow through me, of protection and balance, warmth, gratitude, and guidance.

  On the other hand, I wouldn’t leave the room, determined to sit and wait, to be there when the call came.

  It came in the late morning. Fred’s receptionist asking would I please come by at 2:00 p.m.?

  I brought Lana along. We put on nice clothes and calmly cabbed over, holding hands. Felt resigned, neither hopeful nor hopeless but simply willing to accept God’s choice for me. I was a champion at defeat. Could not really imagine the other thing—victory. In my heart, I knew: I am a writer. God put that in me. I would do it, regardless of Mr. Jordan’s decision, regardless of any outcome, even if no one ever consented to publish the books that I would write.

  Cordially, in a relaxed fashion, Fred met us. I introduced Lana. Warmly he shook her hand and with Old World charm showed us to our seats.

  He had the manuscript before him.

  “I read it completely through last night, until quite late, because as you cut it I found that I couldn’t stop reading. I also found that I wished it would go further, into your later experiences, touch briefly on them, bring them up to date, to the current day, even. Do you think that if I asked you to, you could write a few more chapters, to wind it up?”

  “Yes,” I said, knowing that I could do so easily.

  “Then I want to make you an offer. Or would you prefer that I wait to make it directly to your agent? We can put her on speakerphone, if you like.”

  “Let’s put her on speakerphone.”

  He got the agency on the line. June Clark came on.

  Fred said that he had Lana and me in his office and was calling to make an offer on Jew Boy. Lana took my hand. The agent said: “Okay! What is it?”

  He quoted a five-figure offer. Had he offered two free copies of the book and a catalogue, I would have been thrilled. But a five-figure book advance offer!

  June said: “Let me get back to you on that.”

  “Fine,” said Fred.

  “Hold on!” I spoke up. Looked Fred in the eyes. “I’ve waited my entire life for this moment. Honestly, I don’t really care about the money. Your offer is more than generous. I don’t want to wait a moment more on this.” I extended my hand. “I accept your offer.”

  “Uh, WAIT!” June called out.

  “I’m so pleased,” said Fred, taking my hand. “Jew Boy is a great book and I’m proud to be its publisher.”

  Lana and I hugged Fred, who said he’d have the contract drawn up and sent to June for review and signature.

  We walked and wandered, hand in hand, ecstatic, embracing, kissing long and hard, like figures in a romantic ad. No city in the world is more beautiful than New York to an author who has just landed a book contract with a serious publishing house and is walking side by side with a woman he loves. The city welcomes you to its history, opens wide its doors. The sun dotes on you, the autumnal air sharp and clear, a brisk urban perfume. Passersby smile as normally they never do, and every clothing store is your personal tailor, formerly aloof and unattainable outfits now beg to be worn by you. You are not a stranger but welcomed behind the windows of the most fabulous flats and lofts. You are the equal of any famed personage advertised on huge billboards and marquees. Between you and Leonard Cohen, Madonna, or Don DeLillo, the distance has shrunk. You hold your head differently.

  I stopped with Lana at the hotel to make love. And that evening, while she slept, walked alone the length and breadth of Manhattan, arriving at the gray granite mortuary of the General Post Office at 33rd Street and Ninth Avenue, where as a teen I had stood waiting for my father to emerge from the employees’ exit, to borrow a few dollars from his gambler’s earnings, if I could, and maybe walk with him up to Times Square to share a breakfast of greasy hamburger patties and Orange Julius. Now, as I stood there looking at the enormous building, tears of such sorrow and joy, such longing and loss, filled my eyes. Even this moment, the most important in my life, I knew could not be shared with him because he would not really care. “Oh, yeah,” I could imagine him saying. “So, they’re publishing your book? That’s good. That’s good. So, uh, what else is new?”

  Turned away, walked the few blocks to Times Square, so different now, a tourist trap. A Disney corporate emporium. But a few of the old shooting galleries and novelty shops that Howie and I had explored as children, when we came down here to learn to sing, still stood, and I wandered through them, touching, remembering, tears in my eyes. Would they ever stop flowing? The manifestations of my past, as if memory itself wept. But now I was someone else too.

  And I walked, hard and long, downtown to Twenty-Third Street, to the Chelsea Hotel, to read the bronze inscriptions on the wall plaques about how Dylan Thomas and Arthur Miller and Thomas Wolfe had all resided here, wrote masterpieces. Remembered standing here as a teen, vowing that someday, someday—and now that day had come. Someday had lost the cheap barroom sheen of hopeless and empty promises that Old Ray had warned about. Someday had come, my bright and shining reality, and I thanked God and sobriety and recovery from the bottom of my heart, for I had now become the man that I had always dreamed of being.

  I had one of those epiphanies of almost mystical clarity when the veils part to reveal, just for an instant, the scale of miracle occurring as the result of my recovery from alcoholism. I was in my hometown, New York, the city of my birth, with an anthology just published and a book contract for my memoir in hand, and my name, if just for now, buzzing around Manhattan. I had left a homeless drunk and returned in sober triumph.

  How had this happened? Stood on a Manhattan sidewalk, riveted by my extraordinary blessings. It was not just my dream come true but better than anything I had ever imagined. I had not dared really to believe this possible for myself. But others had, like Old Ray and Carl Little Crow and Eugene and Si. Just blocks from here, in Tompkins Square Park, I had lain dying. In my bones knew: a power greater than myself had lifted me from a grave, set me walking, and rid me of the merciless obsession to destroy myself with alcohol.

  “Don’t quit before the miracle,” the recovery old-timers had told me. “Have faith and hang in there. It’ll be beyond your wildest dreams.”

  I now knew what they meant.

  When I was a little boy, my arms covered with bruises and welts from my mother’s blows, I would fantasize that a grown-up, some kind stranger, would knock on the door, enter, and look around at us, my father and mother and brother and me, see our bewildering anguish and pain, and ask: “Good people. What in the name of God is going on in here?”

  But no such stranger ever came. After a hellish term served in the galleys of alcoholism, I was rehabilitated and became, myself, the kind stranger. Jew Boy was my answer.

  72

  ON THE NIGHT OF THE EVENT FOR THE OUTLAW Bible of American Poetry, I met Barney Rosset, Fred’s old Grove Press boss, and Astrid Meyers, Barney’s lovely partner. Barney invited Lana and me to come by before the St. Mark’s reading, and we went over to their 4th Avenue Greenwich Village loft.

  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 o
f 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.

  BOOK TEN

  73

  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.