Many years ago I had the dubious misfortune of being asked to read another writer’s work out loud at a memorial fundraiser for his widow and child (he had died unexpectedly at the age of 40). His friends had gathered to read his work and works in progress, and I was asked to read a really poorly written early draft of an autobiographical short story. I spent days editing it and reworking it and fixing grammatical and stylistic errors because I simply could not see myself reading what was handed to me. It was embarrassingly bad.

Unfortunately, when I showed up at the reading with my edited manuscript, I was shocked to discover that the original that had been handed to me was reproduced in a collection that had been printed for that occasion (and from which others were reading their assigned pieces). So rather than read what I had hoped was a much-improved, albeit not authentic, version of my friend’s story, I read the original draft that had been printed and distributed to the audience. It was a painful experience in so many ways. A refugee from the genocide in Rwanda, he was capable of brilliant work, but his battle with fatally high blood pressure and the debilitating effects of its medication significantly eroded his abilities as a writer. The piece I ende up reading, I felt, showed him at his most tragic, and not what I had hoped approximated him at his best (although he was really a better writer than I).

Come to think of it, I haven’t done much work in fiction since then. It was at the end of my academic career (during which I had done quite a bit of writing and editing of fiction), and I was already consulting to IT departments. Shit, now that I think about it, I think that the rewrite of his work (in 1998), may have been the last fiction I have ever written. Hmmmm … there’s a story there.

I hadn’t thought about it that way. Perhaps that’s why it seemed weird at times?

Like almost everyone else I knew at that time, I’ve lost track of his wife. I heard that their little boy had some significant developmental problems (he was my son’s age). I don’t know what has become of them.

I highly reocmmend The Disappointment Artist. I’ve read much (although not all) of Lethem’s books and I think his writing improves immensely with each output. It took me nearly two years to get through The Fortress of Solitude, but it was so worth it. (It’s the closest thing that I’ve come across that describes what my area of Brooklyn must have been like before the gentrifiers.)

such a EAT ME BAILEY lovely evening