I think I recently wrote on here about my problems with "the novel" as a concept, partially due to issues with my novel and trying to figure out how to resolve them. As is nearly always the case, the resolution always seems to lead to a lot of work.

I keep telling people that I’m not writing a novel at present; as most of my time is learning how to write a novel, and the text is just sort of the end result of that process. I’m in no rush to hurry up and put out a book, because I don’t think of it as a casual process. If I know of a single way to make this book better before it is published, that will be a bad thing.

The problem with the current draft of the book is that it is told in a very linear fashion. A happens, then B, then C, then D… and it just circles me to the dilemma of the protagonist. Why when we pick up a book do we accept that someone we don’t know just starts addressing us? Why when you open up page one and some dude says "Call Me Ishmael" are you just on board with the concept?

The issue seems to be that we need a reason for this to occur. In Fight Club, it starts with the narrator with a gun in his mouth, and then the rest of the book rewinds and says how it got to the point where Tyler Durden is pushing a gun into the narrator’s mouth. In essence, it starts at the end and then circles all the way back around to show how things got there. But it lays out the reason we are being told a story, by acknowleding the story as being told to us.

Same with a lot of books. In Interview with a Vampire, the whole pretense of the Interview is just to get around this. Otherwise, it would just be Monologue By a Vampire. So, I’m thinking that my novel needs to have a similar framing device.

The bonus of this would be that looking-back-and-telling-the-story angle would also let the character be more snarky. Basically, there are moments in my book where there is a bit of mean-spiritedness in his mindset, but then a lot of times, there isn’t, so the tone of the book kind of follows his mood. Switching and telling it all from some future perspective will even out the tone a lot more, since it will still be somewhat linear, but told from some other point in time.

The question now is what the framing device will be. In the short story, it is told in that looking-back manner, but doesn’t define why the reader is being addressed. So, once again, straying from the short story turns out to be a bad idea. If I’ve learned anything, it is that my instincts were good, I just shouldn’t have second-guessed them. Repeatedly.

So, the plan will be to continue the edit of the book as I have been, but start to shift the tone around as though it is being told from a future point-of-view, despite it not being defined as of yet what that framing device is. I see no point in pushing through with this linear draft just for the sake of finishing it, already knowing I’m going to change it.

Not sure if people follow this sort of stuff, but author JT Leroy was recently profiled in New York magazine as a potential fabrication.

To people familiar with him, this isn’t news. There has been speculation from the beginning that he isn’t a real person, but a pseudonym for everyone from Dennis Cooper to Gus Van Sant. It was something he encouraged all along. When I interviewed him for Oasis in August of 2000, his novel Sarah was getting a lot of buzz, both for the book and the possibility that he didn’t write it because, well, he doesn’t exist.

In my interview, he said: "I  like having questions about who actually wrote Sarah. I like having questions
  about who am I actually. I like having the fiction thing. It makes it a lot
  safer. The more of that stuff, it’s fine with me."

JT and I have remained in contact, all e-mail of course, save for a few phone calls around the time of that interview. I think I even gave him a free ticket to a Weezer concert once, but I can’t be certain. One Thanksgiving weekend, as I stayed home and worked on my novel, JT did the same as he worked on edits to Harold’s End for Dave Eggers, for when it was originally published in McSweeney’s. Everyone else we knew seemed to be out having turkey, and we were both locked in front of our computers, working on fiction between sending e-mails back and forth about why anyone would possibly choose to be a writer.

JT has read the short story that is the basis for my novel, and has always been very encouraging. On some level, it always seemed strange to receive encouragement from him, because his writing was trying to move huge obstacles in his life that have left him shattered. While my fiction has some real components, I have no hesitation to classify it as fiction. Most of my drama is made up, and the characters aren’t me (which I keep having to explain when people ask who I would want to play "me" in the movie version of my book).

So, I have always believed in JT. He has always brought out a maternal and nurturing spirit in me when we spoke. I wanted to protect him from… something, even though most of the stuff he was running from was all in his past. I would always defend him in the endless conversation his identity has wrought on San Francisco literary discussions.

I have friends who went through a similar situation with Anthony Godby Johnson, also a young, sexually abused person who ended up writing a supposedly powerful memoir (I’ve never read it) of his abuse. Except, of course, he never existed and was the creation of his supposed adoptive mother.

Even JT has been rattled by the story, dumping his usual stance of enjoying the ambiguity of it all and instead posting quotes from people such as Shirley Manson (lead singer of Garbage, who wrote the song Cherry Lips about JT), Mary Gaitskill (refuting some of what she said in the New York piece), and others on his blog.

I think the entire issue comes down to two camps. The people who believed there was a JT, and those who didn’t.

As much as JT might like to think he was just the author of Sarah (which I far prefer to his second effort, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things), I think the problem is that when I read Sarah, I read it with full knowledge of its author. It was not some fanciful story detached from its creator. The beauty of that book is that JT was able to take his pain and mold it into something so touching and haunting. I didn’t experience it as something separate from him. The two are one.

I can’t really speak for the other side, because I never read a JT book not believing there was a JT. I don’t know if I can, although the question still remains how I will approach his next novel.

The shift in JTs in the article is something I also felt for a while. Many times his blog was like a Page Six item. In fact, I think on some occassion, he even mentioned that and did bold the names of the celebrities he had interacted with, from someone in Sigur Ros sending him chocolates to whatever else. But I just figured it was him getting caught up in the moment, although it always seemed strange that someone so nervous and mortally shy could hang out with Billy Corgan with no issue, but said if we ever met he would either throw up or end up sleeping with me (I assumed those were always two separate options, but who knows). At the time, he said:

"I have ended up having sex with some of the people I have done interviews with, and it comes up a lot. For so long, my face was all I traded on. There was nothing else. So when I know someone is interested, it clicks in for me, and I go into nurse mode. Well, not nurse mode, more waitress mode — ‘We’re here to serve. I know what you want and I’ll do it.’ It’s hard for me not to. I have a really hard time with boundaries and I’m trying hard to learn about them."

OK, still though, you can meet your rock idols but not some local guy who has a little gay youth magazine? It just never entirely adds up.

I never really got into the cult of JT, either. I went to one book event in San Francisco, where as per usual, someone read a note from JT at how he wished he could be there but of course couldn’t, and then a bunch of local literrati would be reading from his stuff instead. The place was packed. People hung on every word. A microphone was near the speakers, so that Jt could later hear the event himself.

And, I just bailed. To me, book readings are connecting with the author. Not personally, but just connecting the flesh to the word. I tend to go to the "celebrity" book readings in town, and skip all of the unknown authors (unless I’ve read or heard good things about their books). When recently, I had two book event options in one night, and one was Bret Easton Ellis and the other was Karl Soehnlein, I went to see Ellis. I mean, I see Karl at the gym all the time, so I don’t really need to connect the dots between the words and their creator.

Most of the time, I go to just size the person up, humanize them. There’s no better way to deflate your idols than to just go see them in person. I always have enough ego to go to something like the Ellis reading and, despite his years of experience that I lack, know that the only difference between us is that he puts the time in, and has perfected this. It reinforces that it is attainable for me, too.

So, for JT, all I have is the e-mails we’ve shared, the phone calls, and his words. When I read a piece at A Different Light a while back, I sent out a quick e-mail in case people wanted to hear me read. Sorted by city, JT showed up on list of local people I could add to the e-mail, so I did. Hell, never having met him, he could easily pop in, pop out, and I’d have no clue. He didn’t, of course, but wrote back a few days later that he hoped it went well and congratulated me on getting published in the anthology. Like I said, he’s always been very encouraging.

But, a lot of the people who doubt his existence only dealt with him through e-mails and phone calls, too. I mean, Dennis Cooper, who was an early mentor to JT, recently wrote on his blog about the whole ordeal: for me the progression from knowing and caring about a seemingly real 14 year old kid who claimed to have been horribly abused his whole life and was living on the streets and who claimed he was going to die of AIDS any minute and who could nonetheless and quite remarkably write well and honestly and sometimes beautifully about his life to watching this seemingly same kid transform into a fame and fashionability and money chasing alternative culture mini-Paris Hilton to discovering that the entire thing was probably a heartless and greedy if rather brilliantly carried out scam has not been fun at all."

Compared to his relationship to JT, I don’t know JT at all. So, if he’s gone that far to the other side, it certainly raises questions. Last time I called his publisher for a review copy of JT’s latest book, the publicist even added a "if there even is such a person" after saying JT’s name.

But I think there will have to be resolution on the matter soon. Definitely before his next book is published, unless they want every review to be half about whether he exists and half reviewing the book. But even more than that, as much as some people will argue to the death that the opposite is true; for me, a JT book is not a piece of fiction that takes me into another world. I read it as a fictionalized journal entry that has hopefully made JT closer to sorting out his problems. That said, it is powerfully written, raw, and makes you question the humanity of a world that would make someone suffer through some of these things.

And that’s the real problem for me. The book will never be separate from the author for me and if, when reading his next book, the main thing crossing my mind is whether I’m really reading the words of the pained boy I got to know a little bit over the years, or whether it is all just some older woman pulling an elaborate hoax, then the battle is already lost.

But, at this point, I still want to believe there really is a JT. It’s just getting really difficult.

While walking through Chinatown today, I was told by someone that I couldn’t walk up a street (that I had no interest in walking up anyway) because they were shooting a Will Smith movie. So, of course, I was totally intrigued at that point and had to stick around.

Stayed there for a while just watching them film what seemed like it should have been a quick scene, but took quite a while, which goes to show you why movies take so long to make.

The scene has Will and his real-life son Jaden crossing the street in the morning and going down an alley in Chiantown together. The scene starts with extra walking up and down both sides of the street, then a old taxi cab with a Close Encounters of the Third Kind ad on top of it drives by and Will and his son cross the street after the cab and before the next 70s-era call drives by. When the get to the other side of the street, a guy is opening up the front gate to his store as Will and Jaden talk and then head down the alley.

Time will tell how important this scene is, but they weren’t even using the boom mics, so they are either going to loop it later or it doesn’t even have dialogue. First, they had Will’s stand-in and some short little lady standing in for Jaden, and they rehearsed the cameras a few times. After each "cut!" the cars have to back up the street to get back into position, the extras do the same, and then like 15 minutes later, they do it again.

After a while, Will shows up, which I knew would be happening since Jada was just sitting under a tent in a director’s chair reading a book. Actually, I was more interested in her, since I just watched part of Matrix Reloaded last night. Will shows up, and walks across the street the same way the stand-in did. A few takes are blown as people watching take digital cameras and their flash goes off, which they had warned us about, but otherwise, it was about three to five takes, and then these huge SUVs pull up and the Smith family hop in and are whisked away.

Only writing this much detail so I have some recollection about what scene it was when the movie comes out. Apparently, they are shooting in Chinatown for a while. Every so often around Stockton/Washington, you’ll see a notice posted in some business windows that certain streets on certain days will be "no parking" zones, since they have to redo the street to look like the 70s. So, the whole schedule is available if you walk around up there and find one of those sheets.

But, I already missed my chance to meet Fincher when he was up here shooting location footage for Zodiac a few weeks ago, so I’m certainly not going to be a groupie just to watch will Smith walk around some more.

Hmm, today has been largely unproductive, since I decided to finally apply at The Cheesecake Factory for a job. They often come up as a place to work, based on their high-volume but, moreso, their high turnover. It has kind of been my fallback. If nothing else works, I can always relent and apply at The Cheesecake Factory.

Today, I went there at like 11 a.m. to apply, just as they opened, only to discover that three days a week, Thursday being one of them, they have regular interview windows at 3 p.m. So, cutting into the space in time where I’m supposed to be reading Dickens and working on the novel, I’m back downtown at the Cheesecake Factory, filling in a largely useless document (my graduating from a specific high school in 1986 matters how exactly?).

Then, it’s about a 20 minute wait, and they call me back. Two managers escort me into the back of the restaurant that is not filled with patrons, and we review my resume. Of course, the topic is always the same: why waiting tables?

The manager-dude quickly lets me know that based on the high-quality service of their establishment, I wouldn’t be able to start as a server. And, if I was a host or cashier, even an exceptional one, I could be there as long as a year before I got promoted. How did I feel about that? he wanted to know.

I was still trying to get past the notion of thinking of The Cheesecake Factory as a high-quality place, but pushed that out of my head, and did my normal confident thing (since it’s been working so well getting me a restaurant gig?) and told him that based on my exceptional job performance, I would be a server much sooner than that.

Of course, the biggest question, and one I really should have prepared for: Why do you want to join the team at The Cheesecake Factory? Now, this is a walk in the park everywhere else. I can go on and on about why I’d like to work anywhere in the Castro, Millennium, Cafe Gratitude, anby number of places. But The Cheesecake Factory? I was really stumped. I said something about their excellent reputation, the approaching holiday season, who knows really.

Let’s face it. Why does anyone want to work anywhere? Money.

We go back and forth for a few minutes, but then he says that based on the experience of other applicants, he is unable to offer me a job at The Cheesecake Factory at this time.

Spooky… it will only get worse if The Rainforest Cafe follows suit. Although I still can’t bring myself to work at a horrible chain restaurant AND have to go to Fisherman’s Wharf to do it every day. That seems like too much torture for one person to stand.

Just checking in after doing an edit on one of the chapter of the novel. This was just a verb pass, which is becoming a rather standard thing. The short story on which the novel is based was written from one perspective, looking back on a career; but the novel goes chronologically through the same events.

For whatever reason, I still seem to write a lot of it in the past tense, or wose, in a passive voice. But hey, as long as I fix it all before it gets published, it’s all good.

I guess this plays into a dilemma I’ve been having about the novel lately. And by "the novel," I mean the form, not my novel specifically. I guess I’m just having a largely academic debate with myself about what the novel is. I’m reading about two to three chapters of Dickens’ Bleak house now, and that (like my book) is also told by a main narrator (great minds and all), and every so often, his narrator actually refers to the writing down of the information.

But I can’t wrap my head around the motivation for our narrators. This isn’t a diary. It’s a story. I guess, when I pick up a novel written in the first person, my instinct is to know my relationship with the narrator as a reader. Why is he/she telling me this? I don’t even care what the conceit may be as to why this person is addressing me and telling me about events in their lives, just give me something.

This may be why I’m most in love with Chuck’s book Survivor. The guy is in a plane, recording his life story into a tape recorder, and the book is a transcript of that tape. Done. I’m there. And it’s explained within the first page or so. Good. Now let’s get on with it.

But my book doesn’t have that clarity. Not yet anyway. He just… starts talking, and finishes 500ish pages later. Why? Who is he talking to?

I think I understand why I enjoy my book as a reader, but I’m still unclear about why this guy is telling the story. I may never know. I don’t know that it matters. I know I’ve read amazing stories where it is never even considered, just starts and pulls you along.

As for my routine as set out a few posts back, it’s changed a bit, all for the better. I’ve finally gotten out of my funk, and my days almost immediately returned to getting up early (7-8 a.m.), heading to the gym, and then reading, writing, eating, etc., all day, then watch some TV, read what i worked on a bit more, then crash.

Another huge help is that I started a new program to keep me in line, whereby I invited a bunch of people to read the book in installments. Every Wednesday and Saturday, they get to read a chapter, until we all hit The End. Now, this would have been mildly successful if I kept the group down to a small pocket of friends, but to apply some pressure, I opened it up to people back home on the east coast, a large group of friends, mentors, people I respect, etc., etc.

And, man, if that didn’t do the trick. Truth be told, I’m not really that far ahead of them, and that scares the hell out of me, so I’v been giving the book more time per day than I ever did prior to doing that.

So, if you read this site, we know each other, or you’re just like, "what gives? Why aren’t I getting a chance to read the book now?", just let me know and we’ll see what happens.

Not sure what the funk was all about, but it seems like everything is firing on all cylinders again. Still need a job, but we’ll get there. One thing at a time…

Hmm, been hit by new comment spam measures lately, to the point where I was getting 30+ new bogus comments a day on old posts. So, as a result, I had to turn authentication on for comments. Hopefully that won’t be too annoying, but Ive been spending way too much time here deleting spam.

I’ve recently become victim to an intense wave of telemarketing.

Most of the calls I actually don’t get to answer, as they call when I am out of the apartment working at the library. These all seem to prey on a basic concern, that there is a problem with your “loan,” and you need to press 1 immediately to resolve it. I get to bypass this message because I am currently debt-free and don’t owe anybody any money, but honestly who wouldn’t push 1 in that situation? I never knew who I actually borrowed the money from half the time when I was on that side of things.

I also enjoy dialing up car insurance people who send me offers in the mail. They always offer me $10 if they can’t reduce my monthly car insurance bill, so I call as soon as I get in the door. They ask how much I pay now, and I tell them I don’t own a car, so therefore have no insurance. Somehow they always seem to wiggle off the phone without figuring out how to get me my $10 check. Bastards.

But tonight was the most fun. Some new travel agency, sounds like a timeshare deal. They want to either send me to Hawaii for three days and two nights or on a Mexican cruise for four days and three nights. I debate just trying to get them off the phone, but the guy doing the calls is so bad it is funny. He actually had a deliberate pause when it took a moment for his brain to register that the blank in the script was where he was supposed to say his own name. How cute is that?

He barely tells me anything, and I’ve agreed to nothing, but then he shuttles me off to his supervisor to confirm what we talked about. She tells me I need to come to Fisherman’s Wharf this week to sit for a 90 minute seminar and then I will get to redeem either vacation. I’m thinking Mexico, since it is longer, but then she drops the bombshell.

She says that as a family vacation provider, they want me to know that my vacation is for two. Do I have anyone special to bring? Are you married?

No.

Got a girlfriend?

Here we go, let’s see if I can get her to hang up.

Nope. Boyfriend.

Oh, OK, do you want to bring your boyfriend on the vacation with you?

Hmm, I’m not quite sure which one I should bring.

You’ve got several boyfriends?

Yeah, but don’t worry, they don’t know about each other. And I’d only be picking one to bring.

Again. NOTHING?!?! What kind of family cruise line wants some gay lothario hanging out with all their married couples? I’m guessing these people are paid separately, and if I show up, their role is done. She continues on very casually.

So, how about you decide which boyfriend you want to bring and I’ll call you tomorrow to see if they can make it to come to the presentation on the wharf.

I give in. OK, call me around noon, I tell her.

I’m always at the library by noon.