Day 170

Did you know that Jack Kerouac often ended up back at home, living with his mom, in-between his crazy adventures and cross country jaunts? When stuck in a hard place or needing some down time, little Jack would run on home to Mommy Dearest in Long Island. Towards the end of his life he never left her side, eventually passing away before her, when he was only forty seven. I mention this because somewhere in this tale marks my Mom's greatest fear. That I'll continue to run home whenever I need a place to stay. "But," I say, "Jack Kerouac lived with his mother until he was forty seven and look at what a great writer (arguably) he turned out to be." I leave out the dying part though.

I can't even say for certain that this is my up and out moment. I'm going to San Francisco "for reals" in two days but that may last only a few months or through the summer. I mean, the last time I left San Diego was two years ago and I eventually mosied my way back home after a brief stop in Orange County. My original deadline for moving out of San Diego was last September, or was it June? Now everything is up in the air again and who knows where I'll be in six months since it's contingent on so many things.

But shit's exciting that way. I like the unknown.

The only thing I really have to do in the next month or two is figure out what my next book will be about. My original fleshed out synopses were semi-rejected. I submitted them back in December and felt pretty good'em. However, I talked to my editor recently and while they like the two ideas I expanded on, they prefer I stick to a female protagonist. That's great because I'll write anything they want me to write but I'd really love to get away from celebrities, shopping, and the world I created the first time around. While they didn't ask for a direct sequel, they thought maybe something set in the same universe, perhaps using some side characters, that kind of thing, would be nice. In some ways, that's a grand suggestion and would be super easy to do but I'm not sure where to take a story that doesn't follow my original main character. Then again, isn't that what I'm getting paid and contracted to do? To be creative?

The best book I've read so far this year is "Special Topics in Calamity Physics" by Marisha Pessl. There was all this brouhaha about how her book got a lot of coverage because her author photo looked like this. Haters said that she was getting play just because she was a "drool worthy" new debut novelist. Then other people were upset that her author photo was too good looking, because in reality she looks more like this.

While I've always loved the title, the various debates about whether Pessl was hot or not made me decide it wasn't worth a read. How wrong I was. The book is fantastic and full of amazing passages, descriptions, and beautiful writing everywhere. I don't care what Pessl looks like, I think she's brilliant, and I haven't read a book that's made me want to copy down so many quotes in quite awhile. Here's a small selection:

(pg 97) "I'll admit I almost leapt from my seat and boasted, 'I've saved a life too! My shot gardener!' but thankfully I had some tact; Dad and I held in contempt people forever interrupting fascinating conversations with their own rinky-dink story. (Dad called them What-About-Mes, accompanying said phrase with a slow blink, his gesture of Marked Aversion.)"

(pg 206) "It was the cause of many of Dad's outrages too, when people elected themselves his personal oracle of Delphi. It was the grounds for many of his university colleagues going from nameless, harmless peers to individuals he referred to as anathemas or bete noires. They'd made the mistake of abridging Dad, abbreviating Dad, putting Dad in a nutshell, watering Dad down, telling Dad How It Was (and getting it all wrong)."

(pg 246) "Sometimes people say things simply to fill silence. Or as a way to shock and provoke. Or as exercise. Verbal aerobics. Loquacious cardio. There are any number of reasons. Only very rarely are words used strictly for their denotative meanings."

(pg 309) "Not returning phone calls is the severest form of torture in the civilized world."

(pg 422) "My heart landslided. My legs earthquaked."