Writing Boots

Over the holidays, my book received a positive advance review from Kirkus Reviews.

“With a firm command of U.S. politics and history and a matching wit, the author’s short essays present keen insights on figures ranging from President Donald Trump to former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel …

“Though politics is Murray’s bailiwick, it is his later reflections on the importance of communication in one’s personal life that stand out. Essays on the value and intersection of effective communication with marriage, grief, and technology provide a poignancy that transcends politics. …

“A smart, witty account of America’s failure to communicate.”

I received that not with pathetic gratitude or over-the-moon excitement, but with a satisfied nod. I mean, this is my best work. It had better be smart and witty.

“Imagine how bummed you’d be if the review was bad,” my pal Mike said.

Exactly the point—except “bummed” might not be the word.

I’ve read about writers enraged or crushed by bad reviews.

“I will hate you till the day I die, and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make,” said Alain de Botton to a New York Times reviewer of his book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. “I will be watching with interest and schadenfreude.”

Just a little more succinctly, Martin Amis said of a reviewer of his novel Yellow Dog: “Tibor Fischer is a creep and a wretch. Oh yeah: and a fat-arse.”

I hope I don’t get any bad reviews, because relevant past behavior indicates that I will be Amis-like in my response.

There have been just a couple of times in my career when I felt someone unfairly threatened my reputation and thus my livelihood. One of those times, I dreamed that I flew to the maligner’s city and strangled him at his desk; I still remember the look of surprise on his face. The other time, I actually took the Chicago Avenue bus downtown, stormed a mile up Michigan Avenue, burst into the office, waved the guy into a conference room and expressed my outrage with such ferocity that he began to hyperventilate and I had to calm him down.

Anyway, I was pleased with the Kirkus review.

After urging every colleague who would listen to take a total break from work and return physically, intellectually and spiritually refreshed … I recorded my book for Audible over the break, and did a fair amount of other groundwork in preparation for the launch in March.

There were also socially distanced outdoor drink-ups with pals, Zoom calls and various other found joys to compensate for the usual big-family mirth.

And there was still enough downtime to confirm that unstructured days, during COVID time, are not good for me. I can’t imagine they’re good for many people. I have been lucky to have demanding work during this time, and I will be glad to get back to it.

Meanwhile, here is the sum total of my takeaways from this holiday break, in the random order they pop into my head as I wrote this, while gaping at crucial meaningless football games yesterday.

***

Fellas, I learned one thing reading my book in several sessions over two long days: Yes, it is possible to grow tired of hearing yourself talk. But fatigue doesn’t set in until about the seven-hour mark.

***

My 17-year-old daughter and I went on a dawn-to-dusk backroad ramble around Illinois, partly to give her a look outside our liberal Chicago bubble. She kept telling herself what I tell her, that rural Trump people are nice in person and call you “hon” when they serve you pancakes. But we didn’t have pancakes of course, and our only interaction was with an unmasked, smoking gas station attendant in Hanover, Illinois, who seemed to look askance at our Subaru and its equal rights bumper sticker. She turned my daughter down flat for a bathroom, saying truculently that it was closed because of COVID. “She lied right to my face,” my daughter said, and couldn’t be convinced otherwise. 

***

If I could have a year’s sabbatical, I would write a book or make a documentary for our times, about the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates, captained by the great Willie Stargell. The team’s theme song was “We Are Family,” by Sister Sledge, and if you watch the way they played in the World Series and celebrated afterward (as I have, on YouTube), you believe in the possibility of American harmony, and leadership. “We had guys from Panama, black players from the ’hood, white players from the ’hood, we had all kinds of socioeconomic backgrounds,” said Phil Garner, the team’s second baseman. “I think Willie Stargell’s presence and leadership held all that together.” Garner’s teammate Mike Easler agreed: “We just treated each other like we were brothers. All of us got along and if you didn’t get along with somebody, Willie made sure you got along with everybody.”

DiMaggio, hell. Where have you gone, Willie Stargell?

***

A mother writes in a discussion on ACT testing on my daughter’s high school’s Facebook parent group: “I really am in a fog about college and my student seems the same—everything seems unreal right now without in-person school. It’s very hard to keep up with things. … He’s my oldest of four students and I have no idea what I’m doing other than surviving each day!”

***

One night, my wife and I binged on 50-year-old Firing Line debates between William F. Buckley and Jesse Jackson, Muhammad Ali, Eldridge Cleaver and James Baldwin. I found myself consciously listening for guidance as to how to behave (and how not to) in a different decade that nevertheless ought to be just as momentous as the 1960s.

***

A lighter YouTube insight: Howard Cosell, announcing a 1972 game between the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders. The camera alights on the head coach of the Jets, and Cosell casually tells it like it is: “Let’s take a look at the roly-poly veteran coach Weeb Eubank …”

***

Occasionally, as a parent, you ruin your own whole day, just by telling your child the hard thing you need to say. Before my only baby was born, a stranger I met on a golf course told me, “You’ll never be any happier than your unhappiest child.” I knew he was right the moment he said it. But of course I imagined that any child of mine would be happy all the time.

***

And I across a quote from conservative writer David Frum that’s going to come in handy as I spend the first few months of this year promoting (defending?) a book that discourages reasonable people from calling everyone who hasn’t publicly renounced Trump, a goddamned baboon.

“Those who seem to despise half of America,” Frum writes, “will never be trusted to govern any of it.”

***

And that, my friends, is the position of serene enlightenment from which I aim the cannon that will launch me, as a human missile, into 2021.

Fire in the hole.