Once in a while, as you will have noticed if you read this weblog regularly, I worry that I'm done writing. I have panic episodes where I wonder how I'll find the money to pay my publishers back the advances they've given me. Other times I wonder if I'll be able to find the time to write all the various stories that are bubbling in the back of my subconscious. Because there are more than a few of them.
In addition to novels which I am actually contracted to write (Queen of Swords, Tied to the Tracks, Pajama Jones) there's the screenplay Nuns with Guns I wrote with my friend Suzanne that we need to turn into a novel. And there are other stories not quite so close to the surface. These are stories that pop up without a lot of fanfare or notice, and when they do I spend some time observing the details and thinking about them before they get sucked back into my subconscious for more gestation. There's a novel in me somewhere about a person I went to high school with whose life didn't turn out the way she expected it to, in a big way. I've got vivid images of a few scenes of that one, but only a few. Then there's the Volvo story, which has been stuck at the 1/3 mark for a couple years now, but recently reared up unexpectedly and presented me with a solution to the roadblock that's been in the way.
Then there is the huge project of writing about my father's family. This would be creative non-fiction, documenting and filling in the blanks by means of empathy and imagination. The cousins all know that I'm planning on doing this, because I've interviewed them, or most of them. The cousins are a colorful bunch, loud and opinionated and affectionate and profane. Two years ago at a family get together in Florida about six of us sat down together and talked about the aunts and uncles and various family legends, mysteries, feuds and scandals. Whenever I talk to one of them (as I did to Tommy, last night) they ask how it's coming along, to which I always say: it's percolating. Or: I've got to invest the money in having somebody do some archive work for me in Italy. Both things are true.
My father was one of ten kids, spread out over seventeen years, so we've got this situation you run into in big families where I have first cousins with kids older than me. Tom is two years older than me, the first son of my first cousin Benny. He's also the one who recorded the group interview and edited it into a cohesive whole. I got the DVD in the mail the other day and I've been thinking about it ever since, the stories waiting to be told. By me.
Tom and Benny and Richard and Georgie and all the rest of them each have their own idea about what it will mean to have me write the family history. Some of them have the idea that Puzo will have to make way for my version of the Lippi family history. It's true that there's a lot of drama there, and a lot of potential. All you have to do is look at the family history written by Uncle Luigi Alfonso in 1927. An excerpt from a contemporaneous (and very colorful) translation:
GENEALOGICAL HISTORY OF THE LIPPI FAMILY
FROM 16th CENTURY TO THE PRESENT TIME
[...] Carlo rendered himself notorious through his killing of the Padrone of Stella [Cilento], Antonio Cesare Ventimiglia. The said incident occured during the rule of Giuseppe Buonaparte [1] over the kingdom of Naples (about 1807), inasmuch as it is said that as he was about to deliver the fatal shot he exclaimed "Signore, Giuseppe Buonaparte sends you this!" Although this killing occurred in the presence of others, Carlo received no punishment from the law, perhaps largely due to the political powers in control at the time, and also perhaps due to the assistance received from the public.[...]
I just hope I get around to writing it while most of the generation is still alive.
The other book that I may or may not write someday has to do with my more immediate family history, which is dramatic in a different way. A therapist once told me that I'd never completely resolve my anger toward my mother if I didn't take the step of writing about it, which leads me to a dead end, because as I told her, I'm not particularly interested in getting rid of my anger. It has served me well these many years, my own personal power station propelling me along. I like my anger. It is my friend. And really, does the world need another memoir about a spectacularly bad mother-daughter relationship, alcoholism, family dysfunction and abuse? Isn't that all old hat? Looking back at it I recognize the story there -- because there is one -- but I can't imagine anybody would really want to read it unless I spiced it up by throwing in some wire hangers or an affair, JFK or Elvis or somebody else people like to read about.
So maybe my anger has slipped away from me a little bit when I wasn't paying attention. Certainly I'm not sure I could find the energy to excavate the sixties, and anyway, there are other books waiting to be written.
The four hour miniseries