Tragedy

I'm somewhat stunned. I wrote a tragedy. Never did such a thing before. I spent my entire career in show business and narrative fiction doing comedy and light entertainment, always a happy ending, smiling faces, gratitude for the blessings of life in general. There were two or three cruel short satires that I thought were funny, but now I see that they floated in deeper waters, my knowledge of tragedy. I saw it in Robin Williams' eyes, a remarkably funny man, drawn to dead poets and death, met him in Los Angeles. Too many comedians suffered and died tragically: Larry Beezer, Fred Asperagus, John Belushi, Andy Kaufman, Lenny Bruce. They specialized in biting satire, symptom of an illness.

Writing a tragic novel does not mean that I'm sick or doomed. Romeo and Juliet followed in sensible, successful fealty to the Greek tragedies, which Aristotle thought were superior to comedies. If well done, a tragic story gives the audience an intense emotional experience of "catharsis," shedding tears for a reflection of one's own grief in life. We love and lose and then we die. It's the basic truth of mortality, life on life's terms.

It gives me great pleasure to see President Trump, spectacular Melania and handsome Barron walking together. I wrote a long chapter in The Last Book that was titled 'The Beautiful.' My artistic choice always tilts to the sunlit realm of love and pride. I'm entitled to do that as a tribute to the benevolent men and women who helped me, either personally or in literature far removed in time, people I met through their creative work. It was no fun meeting Frank Zappa in person, great fun reading comedies by Ray Chandler ('Pearls Are a Nuisance') and Dashiell Hammett ('The Thin Man'). Without their example, I would not have pursued the uphill climb of writing hardboiled adventure novels, all of them with happy endings.

-- until now. 'Partners' is a major work, if not my magnum. It may very well be the last thing I write. On the flyleaf under the title there is a Jim Morrison line: "The future's uncertain and the end is always near." Tough love in a nutshell. We are given the great gift of life. It cannot end well. Think of Ayn Rand, O. Henry, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, awful karma in a world of lies that robbed them of joy and dignity.

There is entirely too much focus on supernatural evil today, dark burlesque that strips our enjoyment of modesty and comfort, the great pleasure of learning and earning our place in an objectively benevolent world -- until evil curses and medieval metaphysics irrationally strike at random. Reality is far better and far worse than a Stephen King obscenity.

War reduces our expectation of and capacity for love, whether abruptly or over the course of a hard novel that offers hope and ultimately dashes it the end, leaving no one whole or well. Given a choice (?) it is my hope to relegate tragedy to a single leaf on the tree of my work as an author. Frankly, the last page of Partners was so sad that I was disabled for days and it will always haunt me as intensely horrible, that the main character must go on without hope, a worthy young hero doomed to spend the rest of his days searching for a girl he married. The spoiler changes nothing. The novel has a very long story to tell.

I'm writing about it today in honor of them, lovers by right, two children who found in each other's arms the splendor of joy, always natural to be together, always painful to be apart. War does that, pries apart those who love, takes our trusted comrades and happiness. Not difficult to tell that story in small words. I'm good at the obvious. Victor Hugo did it, too. It was obvious in Notre Dame de Paris that he addressed the grim truth of fatality (fate) and in Les Miserables the tragedy of endemic abuse and humiliation. One almost has to shrug off Dovstoevsky, Lawrence, Melville, Dickens, a hundred filthy roaches like Heller and Capote. Tragedy is the only literary canon taught in high schools. In college we are invited to growl and moan with idiots like Arthur Miller and the nonwhite screed of the month.

Tragedy is the lifeblood of journalism. If it bleeds it leads. No one reports millions of bright souls, happy children, successful young people who find romantic love. Their stories dance in my work. Nothing to be shy or embarrassed about. I love life, and no amount of sadness and tawdry sniping can change that. I don't own a television for that reason, and I carefully edit what I listen to on the radio. The wholesomeness of Led Zeppelin and Chrissie Hynde are a blessing. Newscasts get ducked to zero.

It's not that I'm indifferent to current events, at least not historically. I was politically active for a long time, but it has no place in the cloistered temple of creative work. The goal is to take us to another world that exists beyond today's tiresome repetition of political venom. Works of fiction kick open doors and take us into the souls of people we come to love. Their triumph is ours. Their sorrow becomes heartfelt grief, if the novel suceeds.

'Partners' succeeds so well that its weight is a great burden I was not prepared to carry.