A Writer's Life Read online

  Losing the 1999 World Cup soccer title to the Americans when China was simmering with political tension, rivalry, and resentment toward the United States lent significance to this World Cup match that it would not have otherwise warranted, and it brought forth wishful expectations and nationalistic passions within the Chinese population that would not be gratified by the conclusion of this game. I could not imagine a longer and more uncomfortable airplane ride than the one scheduled to transport this player and her teammates from Los Angeles back to Beijing. In China, where it is acknowledged that most parents lack enthusiasm for the birth of females, what amount of enthusiasm would greet this particular female when she returned to her homeland? What would her family say to her? What would I say were she my daughter? What would be the response from the people who lived in her neighborhood, and from the men who headed the regime’s sports commission?

  The television cameras focused on the Americans receiving their medals. It was now nearly 6:45 p.m. I had been watching television for about five and a half hours. I was restive. My wife was still upstairs reading. Her door was closed. She had called down earlier, requesting that I lower the sound coming from the television. She also suggested that we dine out in a restaurant that night, but not before 8:30. I was about to turn off the program, but hesitated. Usually after a major sporting event—a World Series game, a championship prizefight, tennis from Wimbledon, the Super Bowl—the losing competitors were invited to the microphones to offer their views and explanations concerning the outcome. I was hoping to hear something from the Chinese, especially from Liu Ying. But the network terminated its World Cup broadcast shortly after 6:45 without a word from her and without any information about how she was bearing up.

  Why did I care? Why did I quietly think about her throughout dinner while I listened listlessly to my wife and a few of our friends who had joined our table at Elaine’s? Why was I so disappointed and displeased the following morning after I had perused several newspaper articles about the game and learned nothing that I wanted to know about Liu Ying? Later in the week when the newsmagazine cover stories that featured the World Cup also failed to include even a brief interview with her, or any information that would satisfy my curiosity about her, I telephoned an important editor I knew named Norman Pearlstine, who oversaw the publication of Time Warner’s many periodicals—among them Sports Illustrated, Time, and People—and I asked if he might consider ordering a story in one of his magazines that would describe how the Chinese people had responded to Liu Ying’s return, and how she herself had reacted and was reacting to her Rose Bowl experience, and, finally, what if anything this had to say about contempory attitudes and expectations with regard to young women in a changing China.

  If I was sounding a bit lofty on the phone as I impersonated being an editor to one of the most savvy and successful editors in New York, it did not greatly concern me. I was sixty-seven. He was maybe fifty. At my advanced age, I have become accustomed to being indulged by younger people, many of them no doubt encouraged by the fact that they will not have to indulge me much longer. And so I let Norman Pearlstine indulge me. I elaborated and digressed without any interruption on his part, and while at no point did he commit himself or even pass judgment on my idea, he also voiced no objection when I volunteered to send him a memo expressing my thoughts in writing.

  I faxed him at once.

  Dear Norman:

  As I was saying on the phone, I believe that last week’s single blocked kick of the Chinese World Cup soccer player, Liu Ying, might provide us with a story angle by which we may measure China and the United States in ways well beyond the realm of sports competition.

  There’s a photo in today’s New York Times showing President Clinton greeting the triumphant American women in the White House. How did China’s officials greet the Chinese women after their return to their homeland? Who was at the airport?… the story should be told through this one woman, Liu Ying, a step-by-step account of how her life has gone since her foot failed her in the Rose Bowl.

  Back in the 1950s I began my Times career as a sportswriter, and I’ve always found losers’ locker rooms as learning experiences; and I think that the losing effort by the Chinese women last week in California might tell us a lot about our comparative societies.

  I’d be happy to assist if you and your other colleagues think I can. I could assist your China-based correspondents with an interview, or sidebar writing, or whatever.

  I’d surely be interested in visiting the mainland if you think I’ll be a help … so after you have had time to think it through, let me know.…

  After I had faxed the memo, I wished that I had deleted the last two paragraphs. My phone call had been entirely prompted (or so I told myself) by my desire to have my idea accepted by Pearlstine, with the assumption that he would later turn it over to be developed and written by members of his organization. In a sense, I had been doing him a favor. I had come up with an uncommon approach to a story that the rest of the press had apparently overlooked, and I was giving it to him gratis.

  But at the end of my fax I had gracelessly insinuated myself into the assignment, promoting the notion that Pearlstine might like to send me halfway around the world (at his expense) so that I might “assist” his China-based correspondents with my story idea. How utterly stupid of me to propose that! If his China-based correspondents needed my assistance, they were unqualified for their jobs and should be fired. I was also appalled by the tone of false modesty in my final paragraph and the obviousness of my opportunism in seeking to take professional advantage of my personal relationship with the magazine czar at Time Warner. It is one thing to make a suggestion and quite another to belatedly try to horn in on an assignment or reappropriate a story idea after I had relinquished my proprietary claim to it with my call soliciting Pearlstine’s help in publicizing what was of interest to me.

  Maybe I was making too much of this, I reasoned, and for all I knew Pearlstine had liked my memo, and had already forwarded it with his approval down to one of his magazines, and soon I would be consulted by the corporation’s travel department, asking me how soon I could leave for China.

  A few days later I received a call from a high-ranking Time Warner executive who explained that Norman Pearlstine was traveling but that the editors had found my idea very interesting and were grateful that I had contacted them about it. Even though they would not be using it, he assured me that they were sincere in wanting me to continue sending them ideas in the future. I promised that I would.

  As I hung up, I was quite disappointed, but also relieved. China was very far away. I had my overdue book to deal with. The World Cup was yesterday’s news. Liu Ying had invaded my thoughts for more than a week, and now I could thank the Time Warner people for bringing me to my senses. Who wanted to read anything centered on a little Chinese soccer maiden who could not kick straight? The twenty-first century was upon us, and I had new things to think about.

  If this was the case, why did I soon find myself on a jet airplane flying toward China (at my own expense, without an assignment, and without knowing where in that vast country I might find Liu Ying), anticipating my rendezvous with her?

  3

  IN TRUTH, AFTER I HAD LOST ALL HOPE THAT THE MONETARY COST OF my potential wild-goose chase in China would be underwritten by the largesse of Time Warner, I procrastinated for nearly three months before dipping into my own pocket to pay for the trip—which, until the day of my departure (Tuesday, October 12, 1999), I decided I would discuss with no one, including my wife.

  It was not that I was shying away from whatever might be her reaction. I doubted that my wife would find anything about me to be shockingly out of character after forty years of marital familiarity with my various impulses and errant ambitions. It was rather that I myself had misgivings about my motives. Did I seriously believe that this was a valid story worthy of my involvement? Or was I merely reaching out to Liu Ying as a kind of muse, an alluring figure in a mirage that w
ould inspire my meanderings across the mainland of China while I avoided my main professional obligation at home, at my writer’s desk, where I was struggling with my book? When there is a creative lapse in a writer’s work, I reminded myself, a writer can be very creative in finding ways to escape it.

  And so I decided in late July, after the polite declination from Time Warner, to try to forget about Liu Ying and adhere to the daily schedule that I have always sought to follow when attempting to write books at home in New York or at my home on the New Jersey shore, a rambling Victorian beach house that is winterized and that I commuted to regularly, with or without my wife, while visiting my mother, who lived nearby and who, at an advanced age, no longer wanted to drive her own car at night when going out to restaurants and casinos; but she still wanted to go out. So I was her chauffeur and escort.

  When I am writing, each morning at around eight o’clock I am at my desk with a tray of muffins and a thermos filled with hot coffee at my side, and I sit working for about four hours and then leave for a quick lunch at a coffee shop, followed perhaps by a set or two of tennis. By 4:00 p.m. I am back at my desk revising, discarding, or adding to what I had written earlier. At 8:00 p.m. I am contemplating the numbing predinner delight of a dry gin martini.

  Whether I am at home in New Jersey or New York, I work in a single room behind a desk that is U-shaped, formed by three tables at right angles, and I sit on a firm-backed cushioned swivel chair that has armrests and rollers—and, as I shift about, the roller sounds (whether in New Jersey or New York) emit precisely the same squeaks. In both locations the workroom walls—or, rather, the walls that face and flank my desk—are covered with white panels of Styrofoam insulation material, each panel ten feet long, two feet wide, and an inch thick; in my opinion, these Styrofoam panels are more desirable as bulletin boards than are the wood-framed cork examples customarily sold in stationery stores. Each panel, selling for three or four dollars, is much less expensive than a corkboard of similar size, which costs twenty or thirty dollars or more, and in addition to being light enough to be affixed to walls with heavy tape reinforced maybe by a couple of thumbtacks, the Styrofoam panels are softer than cork and easier to penetrate with the dressmaker pins that I use when hanging up instructional notes or reminders to myself, or, on those rare occasions when my work is flowing, the many manuscript pages filled with finished prose that dangle overhead like a line of drying white laundry, fluttering slightly from the effects of a distant fan.

  Most of the desk utensils and machines that I work with in New Jersey and New York are duplicates; whenever I see things that I like and need, and also foresee the day when these things might be outmoded or out of stock, I invariably buy two of them—one for each house; and so now I have twins in computers, printers, typewriters, photocopiers, wastebaskets, pencil sharpeners, fountain pens, and such other regularly used items as electric shavers, tennis rackets, bathrobes, shirts, and pairs of shoes. Being by nature impetuous, one who often deviates from prearranged travel plans and whose tendency to overpack is offset by a lack of zeal for hauling luggage, I seek comfort in knowing that, at least when commuting between New Jersey and New York, I may carry little more than house keys. But since I rarely throw anything away, except pages of my own writing, I am surrounded within these homes by things no longer manufactured and marketed and that in some instances are inoperative—for example, a desk lamp in New Jersey with a corroded switch.

  Although my portable Olivetti manual typewriters purchased during the 1950s are dented and wobbly after my having hammered out more than a million words through miles of moving ribbons (I have also secured several loose letters to their arms with threads of dental floss), I nonetheless continue to use these machines at times because of the aesthetic appeal of their typefaces, their classical configuration imposed upon each and every word. But the Olivetti keyboards are characterized by a springed resistance that I find fatiguing after more than an hour of typing. So in the late 1970s, motivated by a mild case of digital arthritis, I purchased a pair of IBM electrics that offered more speed with a softer touch; they also came equipped with a number of interchangeable print wheels that provided me with the time-wasting opportunity to dally over my phrases and sentences as I rewrote them in diversified fonts that I believe often reflected my changing moods, ranging from the serenity of “Script” to the assertiveness of “Boldface.”

  In 1988, influenced by writer friends who claimed that it is easier to write when using a word processor, I acquired two Macintosh 512Ks at a discount price through my publisher and subscribed to introductory courses in the new technology offered by various young college-educated people who made house calls and seemed to have no career ambitions of their own.

  Within a few months, however, my eyesight seemed to be fading (I could no longer read the baseball batting averages printed in agate type on sports pages), and while I initially attributed this condition to my advancing years, I also began to blame it on the hours during which I had sat facing the flickering glare of the Macintosh 512K computer screens. These screens were also quite small, having a viewable area of six by seven and a half inches, not much larger than a postcard. When, after acclimating myself to my first pair of prescription glasses, I still had difficulty reading my words on the screen, I decided to trade in my 512Ks for the big-screen Macs that were then being heavily advertised in newspapers. But the computer-store managers I approached refused to give me any trade credit for my 512Ks. These machines had zero retail value, I was told by one man, who added that consumers had begun to see them as obsolete about two years ago, and he doubted that there were people around still using them.

  Angry at myself for having been so unaware and so unwise as to launch myself into the computer age with antiquated merchandise that only months before I had considered myself lucky to buy wholesale from my publisher’s no doubt shady distributor, I now stubbornly refused to invest in new equipment unless I received some financial compensation for my supposedly worthless pair of 512Ks. And thus they remained untouched on my desks in New Jersey and New York for most of the next three years, collecting dust.

  But my resistance to upgrading myself also concerned me. Often I saw myself as a Luddite, an old-fashioned, stagnating reactionary—and I particularly felt this way when I was in the company of fellow writers who raved aloud about their newly acquired “state-of-the-art” computers that were practically writing their books for them; even my wife, with whom I presumably shared a time-honored belief in the enduring value of slowly evolving, painstaking literary labor, was now smitten with the speed and facile efficiency of the cutting-edge technology available in her office and that she herself embraced with the devotedness and blithe sense of discovery often associated with late-in-life religious converts.

  The corporation also provided her with extra computers and printers for her home use at night and on weekends, requiring that we install an additional telephone line in each house. Whenever she was traveling around the country or overseas—to sales conferences in Florida or Arizona in wintertime, or to European book fairs in autumn—she toted within her carry-on luggage a slim and stylishly elongated laptop that, when I first saw it, I realized had a screen considerably larger than that of my Macintosh 512K. But her journeying laptop and the corporate equipage that cluttered her reading rooms in New York and New Jersey were much too complicated and sophisticated for me to borrow, not being manufactured by Macintosh and, in any case, beyond my patience and the limited technical skills I retained as a result of reading and rereading my deskside instructional book, Macs for Dummies.

  In 1992, however, about four years after I had bought the 512Ks—which, incidentally, I had recently recrated in their original boxes and stored under my desks—I finally did invest in a pair of au courant computers, the Macintosh IIci. Motivating this purchase to some degree was the substantial royalty check I had received that week from Tokyo, sent by a Japanese publisher who in the early 1980s had arranged for the translation of a b
ook of mine about American sexual practices, which he predicted would become a perennial best-seller in his country because it would make the Japanese people feel morally superior. I first saw the Macintosh IIci while shopping for tennis balls in a New Jersey shopping mall. It was displayed in the front window of a computer shop, with a poster bearing the endorsement of a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of my acquaintance. The store manager allowed me to sit down and type for a while on a demonstrator model, and what I liked about the Macintosh IIci was, of course, its sizable screen (double that of the 512K) and also the fact that it offered a variety in fonts as bountiful as the ice-cream flavors at Baskin-Robbins.

  And so I arranged for the delivery of a Macintosh IIci to each of my residences, not realizing until they were put in place that they dominated my desks with their density and their space-commanding sprawl, requiring that I rearrange everything else that had previously surrounded me (my Olivetti, IBM, Canon photocopier, stacks of Racerase paper, rows of plastic cups containing paper clips, rubber bands, staples, and dressmaker pins) in order to accommodate the new computers’ many component parts: the hard drive encased in a flat-topped heavy gray metal box that resembled an aircraft carrier; the slant-backed printer and its spiral-corded keyboard, both plugged into the hard drive; the long-tailed mouse that was linked to the keyboard; the wrist-lifting green felt slats that fronted the keyboard, and the slick rubber mouse pad at angles intended to protect the user from various carpal ailments. The computers’ most prominent part, which I placed in the middle of my U-shaped arrangement, was their hunchbacked beige box, which was metallic and featured in front a rectangular-shaped glass screen that I preferred to think reflected my adjustment to what was contemporary and technically advanced in America.