Uncle Tom
Thursday, December 16, 2004
If you're not much for reading, listen to this piece courtesy of NPR.
My parents named me after my great uncle, John Thomas Goodrich, whom I have always known as Uncle Tom. Like me, he was a Southerner who ended up in Chicago, where he wrote for the radio, as I do. He also wrote a novel, Cotton Cavalier, which was published in 1932, when he was 27 years old. My first novel comes out in March, when I will be 27. The author note of Tom's book lists his two passions as corn liquor and petite brunettes. I'm more of a wino, but as far as petite brunettes go-and the best among them will go pretty far-Amen.
And then it all went sour. When he was a couple years older than I am now, Uncle Tom ditched Chicago for Hollywood, hoping to make a fortune writing movies. He took to drinking, a fate to which my people are fairly accustomed, and he ended up divorced and bankrupt. Toward the end of his life, he sobered up, but he never wrote a second book. I wouldn't worry too much about the odd parallels between Uncle Tom and me, except for two troubling facts:
Fact 1: I have a deep, abiding affection for booze.
Fact 2: I am oddly drawn to the city of Los Angeles.
Now, I know a lot of writers who complain about how little writing pays, which is silly. Writers are in the business of putting the right words in the right order. It's plenty hard, but it ain't coal mining. To borrow a phrase from W. H. Auden, writing makes nothing happen, and jobs that make nothing happen don't tend to be terribly profitable. Still, it'd be nice to make a living writing. Hence my attraction to L.A. Sitcom writers make so much money that they go home every night, take off all their clothes, cover themselves in melted butter, and roll around in 100-dollar bills and rare postage stamps.
I got to thinking about L.A. in earnest a couple months ago, when I got drunk at a house party in Lincoln Square and made the acquaintance of a petite brunette named Sarah.
Within about five minutes of meeting Sarah, she expressed a fondness for southern California, and I became inalterably convinced that she and I needed to get married, preferably before we sobered up. And then we'd move to Hollywood together. She would work for an art gallery, and I would be a script doctor. We would drink after work in the moderate, responsible way couples do. And as I smiled down at her, I realized: That's how it happened. Tom took his girl to Hollywood, drank with her until she didn't want to drink anymore, and then he drank, as we will, without her.
I could see Uncle Tom at a Lincoln Square house party in 1932. Drunk but not yet fated to drunkenness, he smiles down at an olive-skinned brunette whose warm, boozy breath drifts up toward him as she leans forward, on her tiptoes, so that she can whisper a joke to him about Trotsky or iron lungs or whatever people told jokes about in 1932. And Tom could never have suspected that his best writing was behind him, that his coming failure would be so common and unspectacular that he, like his lone novel, would soon enough be forgotten.
A week after meeting Sarah, whom you will be surprised to learn I have not yet married, I flew to New York to meet the editor of my book. She took me out to lunch at a sushi restaurant and stunned me by offering to buy my as-yet-unfinished second novel. I went out that night and got fairly well trashed to celebrate, of course. But then I did what Tom couldn't do: I sobered up, returned to Chicago, and got back to work, struggling to put the right words in the right order, making nothing happen, trying to live past my name.
My parents named me after my great uncle, John Thomas Goodrich, whom I have always known as Uncle Tom. Like me, he was a Southerner who ended up in Chicago, where he wrote for the radio, as I do. He also wrote a novel, Cotton Cavalier, which was published in 1932, when he was 27 years old. My first novel comes out in March, when I will be 27. The author note of Tom's book lists his two passions as corn liquor and petite brunettes. I'm more of a wino, but as far as petite brunettes go-and the best among them will go pretty far-Amen.
And then it all went sour. When he was a couple years older than I am now, Uncle Tom ditched Chicago for Hollywood, hoping to make a fortune writing movies. He took to drinking, a fate to which my people are fairly accustomed, and he ended up divorced and bankrupt. Toward the end of his life, he sobered up, but he never wrote a second book. I wouldn't worry too much about the odd parallels between Uncle Tom and me, except for two troubling facts:
Fact 1: I have a deep, abiding affection for booze.
Fact 2: I am oddly drawn to the city of Los Angeles.
Now, I know a lot of writers who complain about how little writing pays, which is silly. Writers are in the business of putting the right words in the right order. It's plenty hard, but it ain't coal mining. To borrow a phrase from W. H. Auden, writing makes nothing happen, and jobs that make nothing happen don't tend to be terribly profitable. Still, it'd be nice to make a living writing. Hence my attraction to L.A. Sitcom writers make so much money that they go home every night, take off all their clothes, cover themselves in melted butter, and roll around in 100-dollar bills and rare postage stamps.
I got to thinking about L.A. in earnest a couple months ago, when I got drunk at a house party in Lincoln Square and made the acquaintance of a petite brunette named Sarah.
Within about five minutes of meeting Sarah, she expressed a fondness for southern California, and I became inalterably convinced that she and I needed to get married, preferably before we sobered up. And then we'd move to Hollywood together. She would work for an art gallery, and I would be a script doctor. We would drink after work in the moderate, responsible way couples do. And as I smiled down at her, I realized: That's how it happened. Tom took his girl to Hollywood, drank with her until she didn't want to drink anymore, and then he drank, as we will, without her.
I could see Uncle Tom at a Lincoln Square house party in 1932. Drunk but not yet fated to drunkenness, he smiles down at an olive-skinned brunette whose warm, boozy breath drifts up toward him as she leans forward, on her tiptoes, so that she can whisper a joke to him about Trotsky or iron lungs or whatever people told jokes about in 1932. And Tom could never have suspected that his best writing was behind him, that his coming failure would be so common and unspectacular that he, like his lone novel, would soon enough be forgotten.
A week after meeting Sarah, whom you will be surprised to learn I have not yet married, I flew to New York to meet the editor of my book. She took me out to lunch at a sushi restaurant and stunned me by offering to buy my as-yet-unfinished second novel. I went out that night and got fairly well trashed to celebrate, of course. But then I did what Tom couldn't do: I sobered up, returned to Chicago, and got back to work, struggling to put the right words in the right order, making nothing happen, trying to live past my name.
