PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR AS A YOUNG MAN

I write my first book in 1987, when I am seven years old. It is the life story of a fox actor named (wait for it) Michael J. Fox. It is written on that brown, grade-school writing paper, which is wider than it is tall, with guide lines to show the young writer where the tops of capital letters go, and dotted lines to show where the tops of lowercase letters end. “The Secret Life of Michael J. Fox” is an expose-style, mockumentary article about this fictitious vulpes vulpes and the ups and downs of his acting career. That is the whole joke, that it is an actor named Michael J. Fox and he is actually a fox, so I stop halfway through, and start work on my second book, also written on that high quality writing paper, about gangster fish. This story is lacking even a simple pun to explain its impetus, although if I knew the phrase “sleeps with the fishes” then, I’m sure I would use it. The good news is that I got all my anthropomorphic animal stories out of the way early.

It is 1988 where I make my first attempt at professional writing. I write a stirring Spiderman story again on that same brown composition paper. I don’t remember too much about the details, other than the whole thing is a dream Peter Parker was having been chased by a giant black shadow spider. I mail the story off to Stan Lee, co-creator of Spiderman and president emeritus of Marvel Comics. A few months later I receive my first ever rejection letter, from Stan Lee, telling me that he enjoyed my story but that he no longer oversees the day to day publishing operations of Marvel comics and directs me to send the story to the then newly appointed editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco, and to talk to my school’s guidance counselors about further developing my talent. This is the first chink in the mythical armor of the great Stan Lee: he thinks talking to my guidance counselors is a GOOD idea.

Despite these early forays into writing, I still imagine myself an artist, even winning the coveted (by me) spot of 5th grade yearbook cover artist. My friend Wyatt and I spend numerous afternoons writing and drawing our own Batman comics. Somewhere in the vast caverns of my parents’ house lies dozens and dozens of these 8.5 X 11” (I had graduated up to typing paper by this point) hand-stapled Batman comics. Wyatt is a technically more proficient artist than I am, and he spends hours on each page, and completes maybe two entire 10 pages comics in the entire two years we work on these projects, while I develop a faster drawing style (and even credit it to a pseudonym, Robert LesSert) in order to complete as many Batman comics as I can, even two in a single afternoon. I just have too many story ideas.

1990 I ask my parents for a file cabinet for my birthday to file away all my stories and artwork. In 1991 I ask for an electric typewriter, and keep the house awake on summer nights as I type up script after script, creating my own comic book universe. Some of these I plan to illustrate, others I hand off to my friends Jesse and Darrell to draw. We actually succeed in creating a fairly coherent and interconnected universe of superheroes, and even photocopy some issues and sell them for $0.50 to kids in our junior high, completely unaware how dangerous that could be later in life if any of those kids keep the fool things. We end our universe with the heroes discovering that the evil mastermind who had been manipulating their lives from behind the scenes was a 12-year old boy named R.James Tressel, my nom de plume as writer and editor of T’N’T comics. It is a little early, perhaps, for post-modernism and meta-fiction. But I am almost 13 years old.
After closing up shop of our comics company, we all start a band, where I serve as barely-competent vocalist and lyric writer. We might be the only eighth grade band in history to write and record not one, but two, different concept albums. Ironically, this is also the time when I discover the word “pretentious,” although I never use it following this phrase “Hey guys, what we’re doing now is so.” Freshmen year I write my first complete novel on my Smith Corona electric typewriter, entitled Boys and Girls in which a high school not unlike my own has each of the plagues of Egypt visited upon it, concluding with the death of the valedictorian. I lend the only copy of the manuscript to Jesse, and it now rests in the same place my old Silvertone guitar. He’s gotten better about returning my things now, but then again, I’ve never let him borrow anything as one-of-a-kind and irreplaceable as the sole copy of a novel manuscript. Comforting news: if I die a successful novelist, my third wife won’t be able to publish this awful turd of a novel to make more money and ruin my reputation.


My sophomore and junior years of high school I write a three-part novel, eventually entitled Canadian Nickels for no good reason. The first part, written the beginning of my sophomore year after experiencing the first flushes of love at summer camp, is an overly idealized paean to the transformative powers of love. The third is written in a single day my junior year after discovering my girlfriend cheated on me, in which I portray love as an insidious and deceitful disease of the soul. The second, and best part, is written in between those two relationships in the summer of 1995. I discover the importance of writing from a place of emotional distance. Also: girls will drive you crazy.


Fall of 1996: brief foray into playwriting. “Existence Explained” is a two act play explaining that men and women were put on Earth by two warring alien races and watching our fumbling interactions has become the aliens’ primary source of entertainment. Decide that I haven’t really learned the lesson from earlier. Announce my retirement as a writer at the age of 17.

Fall of 1998: have a dream about a girl I had loved before I had body hair, then I run into her a day or two later. Write the sprawling novel Saturn’s Novel about young love, Japanese autmobiles, masturbation, urination, and a blatant steal from Ethan Frome. Completed in August of 1999, it is well received by my friends and well-wishers. Having my friend Stephanie’s beautiful roommate tell me about all the things she likes about “Saturn’s Wreath” at 1:30 in the morning while sitting in her underwear and tank top is still one of the highlights of my life as an American male.

Fall of 1999: Begin work on Australia, a novel of shifting perspectives, focusing on two twins and their mysterious absent father named Tom Jones, their teacher, and the young girl who they each love. As a writer, extraordinarily proud of the way each of the diverging narratives illuminates the truth, “Rashomon” style. Most of my friends never finish reading it upon its completion in the spring of 2001. Best review: “Um, yeah. I don’t know.”

Spring of 2003: Complete follow-up novel, XOXO, which revisits the themes of love and the nature of reality. Describe the novel to my college writing professor as “a meta-fictional Sex and the City;” my ability to distill a heartfelt piece of creation into a rather dodgy tagline means I missed my calling as a Hollywood movie executive. My interests in alchemy and meta-fictional wonkery obscure a sweet story of three sisters and their awkward and culturally misplaced father. Also obscuring said sweet story? The most offensive and off-putting open paragraphs of all time.

Finish the novel and begin work teaching at local high school. The next five years is spent teaching young men and women to be upstanding citizens, while covertly spreading my feminist-Marxist dogma. The extent of my writing during this period consists of hilarious comments in the “To:” section of hallway passes for my yearbook staff that are never read by the teachers they are given to and only rarely by the students themselves.

After leaving the rigors of public education, I enter a life of semi-retirement working as a private tutor and write The While. I still teach creative writing over the summer to gifted ninth and tenth graders. While sitting in a story conference with one of my students, she tells me that she doesn’t have any ideas for any stories. I try and assuage her doubts. We all have stories. She confesses she does have one idea, but that it’s stupid. It involves an ant, having to cross a large picnic in the park to return home to his anthill. She wishes she could come up with something different. A story about talking animals is stupid, she assures me.

It’s a place to start, I tell her.