living the dream

Only in the last couple of years have I been free of a recurring nightmare featuring my high school journalism teacher. It's not her fault. She stands as one of the inspiring figures in my life – she had a lot to do with me choosing journalism as my first career, and a lot to do with the high standards I believe I champion and try to attain in all my work.

In the dream, she scolded me for failing to count out a headline correctly (newspaper editors will understand). And I felt ashamed that I'd let her down and doubtful of my skills.

On Wednesday, I had coffee with my high school journalism teacher. For real. I had sent her a review copy of my forthcoming novel, HEADLONG. Its protagonist is a once-renowned journalist trying to reclaim his life. And I sent it to her as a way to thank her for shaping that part of my career – and my own character; I also sent it in hopes that she'd be able to provide some networking leads.

To my delight, she loved the book. No matter how old I get, there's nothing quite like being affirmed by the people who've helped shape me. And, not surprisingly given her history of generosity, she pointed me to some people with whom I could network.

But then she asked me a question: "Why did you have Nick (my protagonist/narrator) misuse the nominative case? It makes him sound uneducated." My nightmare came back to me. I froze inside, and tried to keep a confident smile on my face as she went on to describe herself wondering why I'd made that choice: "I know Ron knows the correct use of the nominative."

I couldn't move my limbs. I mumbled something about how the usage was a conscious choice, to keep Nick from sounding too formal. But inside I had one looping thought: I cannot admit to her that I can't remember what the nominative is, let alone the correct use of it.

And I didn't. I didn't want to be exposed. Even at 54, I didn't want her to be disappointed in me. I let the moment pass.

I did, as soon as we parted, Google "nominative case." I looked at examples of it, and considered how and where I might have misused it in the book. And I will be squeezing in some last-minute edits this weekend.

a mad science pilgrimage

My wife Barbara and I are off this weekend for a pilgrimage to Wardenclyffe, the site of inventor-phycisist-futurist-wildman Nikola Tesla's last working laboratory. Wardenclyffe was supposed to be Tesla's crowning achievement. Behind the lab was a 180-foot-tall tower that reportedly shot sparks into the night sky (how cool is that?).

According to Jane Alcorn, president of the nonprofit group The Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe, “Tesla dreamed of having this site be a place where he could transmit messages and pictures wirelessly." (This more than a hundred years ago – how can you not love this guy?) 

Tesla, widely credited with design of the modern AC electricity supply system, also hoped to wirelessly transmit electric power free to everyone in the world. The Wardenclyffe Tower was the site he built to do that. 

Alas, he couldn't pull it off, and Tesla's old building is long abandoned – windows boarded, weed and vine laden, behind a chain link fence topped with barbed wire. No Trespassing and For Sale signs. Sad, until recently, when Internet cartoonist The Oatmeal got behind fundraising efforts to turn the site into a Tesla Museum. (Hooray for them, truly, but that's another story – theirs.) 

For me, Wardenclyffe is a haunted site in the best way. And I want to get down there while it's still abandoned and forlorn. I mean, Tesla lived out his last years as a recluse in a New York hotel, tending to pigeons and getting a reputation as a mad scientist. Which, in combination with his significant achievements, is why he's part of my ongoing project around astronomers, alchemists, and other (not so) mad scientists. 

So here's hoping that a) Wardenclyffe is still a ruin, and b) the work to turn it into a Tesla Museum is wildly successful. I don my pith helmet and begin the quest. 

howl

Ophelia, by the Band. There's really only one way to listen to this song. Driving on an open road, windows down, volume cranked to the point where the Delta horns scratch into your ears and Levon Helm's kick drum thumps against your sternum, and you're drinking from a cup of corn liquor and howling along at the top of your lungs, "Ophelia, where have you gone?" (If you insist on being a responsible adult, then sit in your parked car, windows down – in fact, find an industrial strength can opener and peel the roof off that vehicle, slop an extra portion of corn liquor into that tin cup, stretch out on your bucket seat and howl even louder, until you sound like a wounded animal.) Sweet.

the power of scary stories

Why am I drawn to scary stories? Because they're hard to write well, and challenge is always attractive to me. But also because fear is primal. Fear is part of who we are (or at least part of who I am), and I'm interested, more and more, in how people respond to what terrifies them. Psychological terror intrigues me most. I'm less interested in blood on the page than I am in perceived danger that might or might not be true. What's hard to tell someone else about – or know whether to act on – because you can't prove it's real. My favorite example of such a narrative is the 1973 movie "Don't Look Now."

"Symbiosis," my first successful scary story, started out as blood-on-the-page horror. A story in which a father and daughter start having the same dreams – dreams in which the daughter is endangered or injured – and the dreams start coming true. In its early drafts, the terrifying thing played out literally at the end. And while the ending had a visceral physicality that made me happy (as a literary guy, I had to overcome the fear of being visceral), overall it left me disappointed. A couple drafts later, I realized why.

For me, the deeper terror lay in not articulating the outcome, but in leaving it just this side of realized, where the possibilities planted in the reader's imagination – wondering if/when they would happen – were the real terror. And fear, not the resolution of fear, was what I wanted to leave readers with. Because ultimately it's a story about parental fear – the moment where we realize we need to let our children go, into a world that will sometimes hurt them. We cannot always protect them. For that character, in that situation, the real terror is living with the fear.

This lesson has proved instructive as I have tackled – am tackling – two new scary stories. Again, there is no blood on the page. There is palpable threat, as experienced by a character in isolation, and that sense of threat builds throughout the story. The pivotal moment in each draft is one where the character has to ask him/herself: is this danger real, or am I doing this to myself? What fascinates me about the question for characters in isolation (one physical, one emotional) is that at such a moment, with such a question, either answer is terrifying.

you are already naked

From Steve Jobs: 

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

Tycho Brahe's metal replacement nose...

... is one of the many reasons I'm fascinated with him (look closely).

After an argument at a party at the University of Rostock in Germany in 1566, Brahe lands himself in a sword duel with fellow Danish nobleman (and third cousin) Manderup Parsberg (no, it wasn't over a woman; legend has it, the argument was over who was smarter). In the duel, Parsberg slashes Brahe's face, and Brahe loses a big chunk of the bridge of his nose. This triggers the renowned astronomer's career-long interest in medicine and alchemy. For the rest of his life, he wears a replacement nose of silver and gold, using a paste or glue (which he carried with him at all times) to keep the metal nose attached.

fall of the phoenix

​Whether you mark its demise as yesterday or, like me, a couple of years earlier, the fact remains that, for decades, the Phoenix was a Boston institution. A weekly newspaper that defined as much as covered the city's arts and culture and was, in my biased view, its political conscience. For me, it was also an invaluable training ground: my first real newspaper job. The place that taught me the value of work done well. Hard-nosed reporting. Investigative journalism as a form of engaged citizenship: a high calling. Thank you Renee Loth, Richard Gaines, and John Ferguson. Great teachers, all. And for more on the Phoenix, treat yourself to Susan Orlean's post in yesterdays New Yorker blog.