Remembering Studs Terkel

"At a time when pimpery, lick-spittlery, and picking the public's pocket are the order of the day — indeed, officially proclaimed as virtue — the poet must play the madcap to keep his balance. And ours."

— Studs Terkel

Halloween And The Distinguished Departed

Halloween again, so I thought I'd repost the info about Pierce Brothers Memorial Park and Mortuary in Westwood, also known as Westwood Memorial Park ...

Located off Glendon Avenue, behind the high-rises that front Wilshire Boulevard, this small cemetery is the final resting place of some of the 20th Century's most talented performers and writers. It's the only place you can pay your respects to the man who got no respect, Rodney Dangerfield, whose headstone proclaims "There goes the neighborhood." Of course, this epitaph assumes the neighbors know he's there. Of this, I'm not so sure.

Though the celebrities interred within have names that continue to loom large in Hollywood, this place is easily overlooked. Tucked between a ramp for an underground parking garage and an office building, the entrance to Pierce Brothers is about as modest as the simple bronze plates that mark the graves of Truman Capote and Marilyn Monroe.

There are, of course, exceptions, like the aforementioned stone of Dangerfield. My favorite is the dark humor of Jack Lemmon's marker, pictured above (btw, his grave is within cigar-smoking distance of Walter Matthau, who played opposite Lemmon in "The Odd Couple"). Writers will likely relate to Billy Wilder's self-depricating commentary: "I'm a writer, but then, nobody's perfect."

I've put together a small photo gallery at this link. Also, a more complete list of the celebrities buried at Pierce Brothers is available at Find A Grave.

Remembering Tony Hillerman

This wonderful, 10-minute video bio of the late author Tony Hillerman was featured at LATimes.com.

Hillerman died this week at age 83.

At about the 5:15 mark, he talks about his first novel, THE BLESSING WAY, which his agent panned, then advised him to stick to non-fiction:

"I'd been selling magazine articles for non-fiction, and I said 'well, why you gotta be so negative about it?'

And she said 'well, because it's a bad book.'

I said 'well, that's a typical New York City answer. Why is it a bad book?'

'Well, it falls between the stools,' she said, 'it's not a literary novel and it's not a genre novel and the bookstore people won't know what shelf to put it on.'

She didn't want me to rewrite it. She said 'why don't you just forget it.'

I said 'well I think I'll rewrite it.'

She said, 'well, if you're going to rewrite it, get rid of all the Indian stuff. Nobody's interested in Indians.'

Suffice it to say, as the video's narrator points out, Hillerman got a new agent, kept in the "Indian stuff," and went on to publish 18 Indian mystery novels.

Click to e-mail TJ Sullivan in LA

What's In A Name Like 'Efthemios?'*

Way back in June, The New York Times published a story about "a growing band of supporters of Senator Barack Obama [...] who are expressing solidarity with him by informally adopting his middle name."

As you may have noticed by the new banner on my personal blog, I have kinda sorta joined that band, at least until Election Day, but not for purely political reasons.

If my goal was to support Obama's candidacy, I could certainly have found a more effective way. Instead, I took "Hussein" as a peaceful form of protest, a statement of my profound opposition to idiocy.

Today I write as "TJ Hussein Sullivan" because America's education system has so obviously failed to instill an ounce of common sense in many of our citizens. How else can you explain a person smart enough to work all the dials and switches required of a radio talk show host** who behaves like a schoolyard bully, attempting to belittle and degrade Obama by mocking his middle name?

"Hussein … Hussein … Hussein."

Obama, however, is hardly my only concern.

I am "TJ Hussein Sullivan" for Sen. John McCain, whose middle name is "Sidney."

Yep. Sidney.

I'm "TJ Hussein Sullivan" for former Vice President Al Gore, whose middle name is "Arnold," and for former President George H. W. Bush (41) who has a "Herbert" stuck in there.

And, remember the late Sen. Paul Tsongas? Paul Tsongas's middle name was "Efthemios."

Seriously. Efthemios.

Haven't the John Sidneys, the Al Arnolds, the George Herberts and, yes, the Paul Efthemioses suffered enough? My God, it's a wonder any of them survived recess.

— TJ Hussein Sullivan


* Cross posted at LA Observed.

**This is one of many examples.

UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times notices.

Rejection

Author Henry Miller summed it up best when he wrote that, to become an artist, you must "be crushed … have your conflicting points of view annihilated." He wrote that you must be "wiped out" as a human being "in order to be born again an individual." He used words like "carbonized" and "mineralized" to describe what a writer must endure before he or she can "work upwards from the last common denominator of the self."

Had I read Miller before taking my leap into creative writing four and a half years ago, I’d have surely dismissed his advice as inapplicable to my life. After all, I'd been planning since college to traverse the same gateway used by my literary heroes, many of whom also started out at newspapers. I was certain that my years of reporting would provide a kind of equity against which I could borrow to gain entry into publishing. My journalism career had been "successful" and "rewarding,” and I had an "impressive" list of "accomplishments" and "awards.” I fired these words like arrows at the hearts of agents and expected them to swoon.

There was no swooning.

Instead, I have been "annihilated ... wiped out ... (and) carbonized." I've learned to write all over again. I've repeatedly built and rebuilt, razed and reframed the same stories. The highs have been higher than any I’ve ever experienced. The lows have been the lowest, the destruction of self, and a bit of self-destruction.

In the past four and a half years I’ve rewritten two books so many times I’ve lost count. And, along the way, I've made most of the mistakes they mention in the books about book writing (the ones I read after I made the mistakes — STORY ... YOUR FIRST NOVEL ... MAKING A LITERARY LIFE ... ON BECOMING A NOVELIST).

The first book came back battered and bound in bandages (2005)

My first book was read by a major publishing house in New York City, only to be returned looking like a badly bandaged body, the result of bad handling by the postal service, though they managed to keep the encouraging note of rejection intact. The second book was requested by another big house following a face-to-face meeting with one of its editors in New York, but that too came back ... addressed to "Ms." TJ Sullivan ... a blow to both mettle and manhood. Now, here I sit, all the more humbled and wiser for having survived it, with a first novel locked away in my bottom drawer, a fresh and solid second novel on my desktop, and the outline of a third book taking shape nearby on dozens of 3x5 cards.

And yet, that familiar stab of rejection still stings just as much.

I received my first rejection letter in long time yesterday, from an agent I thought would be a good match for both me and my book. I know now how little such responses mean. As with the rewrites, I stopped keeping tally of rejections long ago, an exercise as pointless as counting hiccups, or sneezes. They're all an ineradicable part of life. Some people get more than others. Some get less. Eventually, one will be the last. But, the first is always the worst.

This is the writer's life, and I've no intention of doing anything else but continuing to write books.

Nonetheless, as Billy Joel sang so well when I was back in high school, sometimes "I really wish I was less of a thinking man and more a fool who's not afraid of rejection."


— TJ Sullivan

* Cross posted at LA Observed.

The Casualties

The Los Angeles Times entryway -- By TJ Sullivan

A partial cut list from today's Los Angeles Times layoffs is up at LA Observed.

Also not to be missed is maverick publisher Eddy Hartenstein's ill-timed note to staffers (posted on the same day the cuts were announced). The segue to happiness appears in the introductory paragraph: "The good news, however, is that we are continuing to reinvent this fine company so it will be around long into the future."

From the looks of the cuts, it would appear "reinvent" means undoing some of the recent reinventing.

Included on the list are:

• Accomplished writer, NPR book critic, blogger (and a very good friend) Veronique de Turenne, who was hired less than a year ago to help usher the LA Times into the digital age as its "lead blogger on a local news effort." (Here's one bit of "reinventing" they couldn't even give a year to grow.)

• Film critic Carina Chocano (not that this needs to be pointed out, but the LAT is the paper of record for the city in which the entertainment industry is based, and the paper is laying off one of its star film critics).

• Entertainment editor Maria Russo (an energizing editor respected by many, who left the NY Observer four years ago to come west and help improve the LAT, all so the publication could -- SURPRISE -- lay her off today).

• Editor of the Real Estate Section Lauren Beale, who skillfully edited every cover story I ever wrote for her section at the LA Times. Never mind that the real estate market, and the associated stock-market crash and credit crisis will end up being the biggest story of 2008 for the nation, the state and the city of LA. Never mind that Los Angeles is as well known worldwide for its sprawl as for its lavish homes and valuable real estate. None of that stopped the LAT suits from axing the Real Estate section this past July, and now, unfortunately, Lauren too. (Lauren's blog post on the section's demise pointed out that real estate stories would continue to appear online and in both Sunday Business and the Saturday Home section. Losing Laura means the very talented people left behind will have far less time to do everything right, let alone well).*

• Literary and cultural reporter extraordinaire Scott Timberg (he's also written for Art Review, GQ, Men's Vogue, the Boston Phoenix, and Slate).

• DC reporter and author Stephen Braun.

• Pulitzer-winning photographer Annie Wells.

• The former fashion editor, who had most recently been filing obits, Mary Rourke (who stuck with the LAT despite being bumped around as they cut cut cut).

• Metro reporter John Mitchell (who, besides being a great reporter with an rare depth of knowledge about the city and its history, has often donated his time to help educate journalism students at UCLA's Daily Bruin).

... And the list keeps getting longer. In fact, it's still growing as I file this. My apologies to those I missed.


*UPDATE: After two weeks in employment limbo at the Times, Lauren Beale's name was struck from the layoff list and therefore she remains the paper's full-time Real Estate editor.

Click to e-mail TJ Sullivan in LA