A lot of people think that because Zach and I run a publishing company, we are therefore flush with cash. A lot of people are correct. Take today, for instance. Today we had to ship Hiding Out to the printer, far off in an exotic locale. We raided our savings to pay for the overnight delivery, and took one of our corporate vehicles (here seen in our executive parking spot) over to FedEx for the dropoff. And we still had enough money for a celebration, plus some preventative healthcare.
The New England hamlet in which I grew up is mildly famous to mild-mannered historians of early America. When George Washington commissioned the schooner Hannah as the first warship of the Continental Navy, it sailed from Glover Wharf in Beverly, Mass (on September 5, 1775, to be exact). Beverly is therefore the birthplace of the American Navy. Marblehead, Mass stakes its claim as the navy’s birthplace by virtue of the ship’s owner being from Marblehead. But the chuckleheads of Marblehead are wrong on this one. Hannah ported and sailed out of Beverly. That title is ours.
Here’s another controversial claim: The John Balch House on Cabot Street is the oldest wood-frame house in America. This one hits close to home, because while my mother is Beverly born and raised, my father grew up in Dedham, Mass, a blue-collar town on the other side of Boston who claims that the Fairbanks House in that berg is the oldest wood-frame house in America. Serious business! I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard the two of them argue about this. I’d bring friends home from college, and over a peaceable conversation in my parents’ living room my mother would casually bring up the Balch House’s status, and my father, like clockwork, would interrupt with a “No, no, no: The Fairbank’s House, in Dedham, is the oldest wood-frame house in America.” Clockwork.
Today, the Boston Globesettled it. Neither home is as old as it claims, but Dedham trumps Beverly. The Fairbanks dates to 1641, whereas the Balch House was likely built around 1677/78. My favorite parts of this story are Beverly’s indefatigable sense of historical justice (they’re going to keep testing); the Beverly Historical Society “announced” the finding on page four of its quarterly newsletter; and the very nice historian who felt he “had to keep my mouth shut on the subject.”
Maybe now there will be peace in the Messinger home.
UPDATE: I sent my parents the link to the Globe story. My father e-mailed me back, saying: “Thanks for the info I always knew.” And when I talked to my mother on the phone, she said, “What are you doing reading the Globe?
In case the post below wasn’t sporty enough for you, here’s a short piece about the ethics of fantasy baseball.
And back in book news, Featherproof’s website has been sharply redesigned. It’s a lot cleaner and easier to navigate, I think, and it puts our books front and center. Also, after two years of doing Featherproof, Zach and I have discovered the boundaries of our skills. We’re looking for someone to help us with press. If you’re interested, or if you know someone who would be, please do get in touch.
And lo and behold, we have a “soft launch” of the Hiding Out cover up on the site now. It’s our first official announcement. Off to the printer a week from today.
So sayeth Kurtis Blow, so sayeth I. This entire post is just an excuse to link to the video below, so if you have no interest in reading my thoughts on basketball, just scroll down and watch. It’s worth it.
I have to defend my NBA basketball fanhood now and again against two camps: Those who claim college basketball is a vaunted, purefied version of the sport (They don’t pay the players! That doesn’t make them indentured servants, it makes them better!), and those who decry the post-MJ edition of the game as lacking any semblance to a team games(also known as the Iverson Has Ruined Our Fun argument). I had some fun watching the NCAAs this year, largely because I was in the running for first in my office pool. I enjoyed the outcomes, but mostly missed the athleticism and personality you find in the NBA. And the last argument is ridiculous. Steve Nash, a point guard known for making his team better, is the reigning two-time MVP.
I stopped watching basketball about 10 years ago, when I went to college and didn’t have time or energy for sports. Or inclination, really. I was too cool, too much of an aesthete, too much of a person the current version of me would dislike now. Last year I decided I was going to become a fan again, so I started a fantasy basketball league, studied the NBA religiously, and found it full of phenomenal players, insane antics, the type of athletic savants that I constantly wish there were more of, and more drama than Obama. I think that last sentiment is the most appealing to me. Basketball has filled the niche in my soul left empty after Six Feet Under went off the air.
Tonight is Game 2 of the Heat vs. Bulls in round one of the playoffs. It’s killing me a bit that I won’t be able to watch it, but I think the Bulls will take this one, and then go to Miami for two games, winning one of those. I’m hoping for the series to come back to Chicago, Bulls up 3-1, so that when I go to game 5, I’ll watch the Bulls put down Shaq, Payton, flat-footed ‘Toine and cyborg D-Wade once and for all. The Bulls are a sly, efficient machine. I remember watching a G.I. Joe episode as a kid, and Snake Eyes, the mute, all-black wearing ninja master (a.k.a. my seven-year-old self’s number 1 homie), attacked a tank. He struck it in various places over the course of about 30 seconds, and everyone laughed when he was done and the tank was still standing. They mocked him and his lack of firepower. But about 10 seconds later, the nuts and bolts of the tank started loosening, popping out one by one and, under its own weight, the tank eventually collapsed in a heap. Snake-Eyes was on some silent assassin shit, and I ate it up.
That is this Bulls team. And if I’m being honest, I guess the tangential point of this post is that I’m same person now as I was when I was seven.
I’m starting to get amped about Hiding Out, which heads to the press in less than two weeks. We’re through with all of the major edits, and we’ve gone through three rounds of proofing. We’re going to have one more on-page proofreader look it over, and I plan on copy editing it another three or four times before it goes to press. It never really ends, until it does.
Zach is done with the cover, and it looks awesome. You can check it out here. It’s a pdf, so checking it out means downloading it. Sorry.
The great Betsy Crane bestowed an awesome blurb to run along the back. Betsy’s a friend, sure, but we became friends because I’m a big fan of her work, and interviewed her for Time Out back before the mag even started. It’s a huge honor.
Last week I overnighted a copy of the manuscript to another writer I really admire, hoping he’ll get his blurb in before the April 30 deadline. He’s on vacation at the ends of the earth, and the shipping cost me a dinner out with the lady, to say the least. Here’s hoping it comes through…
I really can’t recommend Savage Detectives enough. It’s a haul, for sure, and it’s “experimental” in the sense that the narrative takes many forms, but none of those forms are impenetrable in the least. If I had time to enjoy reading, I’d hunt down Bolaño’s novellas and give them a read right now. It’s always fun to discover a writer as good as he was.
