Read James Wolcott's, Lucking Out. It's So... Good.

I didn't entertain high expectations for myself. High expectations weren't nurtured in my neck of nowhere back then; children weren't fawned over from an early age as "gifted" and groomed for a prizewinning future; self-esteem was considered something you had to pluck from the garden yourself. Attending Frostburg certainly wasn't touted as the slingshot to a soaring tomorrow. I remember the then head of Frostburg's English department---in whose office hung a framed letter from T.S. Eliot, the closest thing to a saint's relic---drawing on a cigarette in class and pronouncing, "Some of you will make something of yourselves in life (here he took a juicy pause worthy of Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh), and some of you will end up wiping the lunch counter at Woolworth's." I rather doubt my generational counterparts at Princeton and Yale had their chains yanked so. Then again, he prided himself on his crusty curmudgeonliness, and another one of my English-lit professors, who later went on to become a prison chaplain, loaned me money when I decided to leave for New York, an act of generosity that I wouldn't want to go unrecorded. Anyway, adversity isn't the worst thing to have on your side. Frostburg's inferiority complex helped stoke an underdog attitude that made you want to prove everybody wrong. And by "you" I mean "me," since I don't know if any of my classmates felt the same way, or if they were even listening. They may have had a whole different narrative playing through their..."

From James Wolcott's new memoir, Lucking Out: My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty in Seventies New York.

The Skimmer and I didn't feel well yesterday. We spent a lazy day inside watching TV, napping and reading. Well, I was reading. The Skimmer was listening. As every few minutes I'd read a passage to him from Lucking Out.

"Skimmer, Skimmer, you up? Listen to this."

On the inside looking out, I managed to become a minor fixture in the aquarium, part of the sandy grit at the bottom of the Voice's ecosystem. I dated a co-worker, though dating isn't exactly what we did. I'm not sure what it was we did, recalling only the prison heat of her five-floor walk-up on Eighth Street---a street as unpicturesque today as it was then---where she once chucked her shoes at me as I exited following a minor spat in which it had been determined I was wrong.

The Skimmer chuckled, "We're always wrong."

"Yes, you are! But so few of you are so eloquent about it."

Wolcott continued, describing the shoe chucker as a "luscious string bean," "an Italian-American tempest with a raucous, dirty laugh and chocolate eyes who enjoyed a smattering of rough sex."

I didn't read that or what followed out loud. Didn't want The Skimmer to get any ideas. I already had a headache.

From the Kirkus review, a group who prides themselves on being The World's Toughest Book Critics:

...the entire book is not only a bittersweet valentine to a much-maligned era but a model of exemplary prose that any writer would do well to study.

I've been a grateful student of Wolcott's, taking mental notes for years. So lucky his exemplary prose are only a click away. If I posted lines from his posts that surprised and delighted me, lines I'd like to remember so that I could refer to them to see how it's done, my blog would be so filled up with excerpts from him that I would have to change my blog's name from Blue Girl In A Red State to Blue Girl In A Red State Who Reads Wolcott In A Blue State 24/7 If Only He Would Post That Much, The Slacker.

I did post an excerpt from one of his posts on Facebook early in the summer:

Will Texas gov Rick Perry--i.e., George Bush III--get in the race? Please, let it be so. He and Romney can have a hair-off, with hot combs at dawn.

I know they both have that hair. I've thought about both of them having that hair. I've stared at their hair, in those stupid debates, week after week. And where I go, Ew, gross, Wolcott comes up with a hair-off, with hot combs at dawn.

Yesterday, as I was reading the excerpt at the top of this post...

Anyway, adversity isn't the worst thing to have on your side. Frostburg's inferiority complex helped stoke an underdog attitude that made you want to prove everybody wrong. And by "you" I mean "me," since I don't know if any of my classmates felt the same way, or if they were even listening. They may have had a whole different narrative playing through their...

...My right eye began to itch. I pulled my glasses down a bit on my nose and closed my eyes. As I ran my finger beneath my brow, I thought about the different ways that sentence could end.

They may have had a whole different narrative playing through their... heads.

They may have had a whole different narrative playing through their... minds.

I knew better.

They may have had a whole different narrative playing through their internal sound systems.

Surprising and delightful!

This student still has a lot to learn. Lucky for me, I'm only on page 31 of Lucking Out. And so far, it's been one gem after another.

How I got to Mailer was the equivalent of firing a paper airplane out the window and having it land at JFK.

And:

Reading the Voice, you could practically hear the clomping hooves of police horses as a protest threatened to get disorderly, tear gas canisters about to hit the cobblestone. Since New York didn't actually have that many cobblestoned streets, my aural imagination must have been using its embellishing brush.

Or, when he was back in Dan Wolf's office for another interview:

To return to the office where Mailer's photograph silently roared: The questions Wolf asked were basic and general, mild probes befitting an informal interview with a non-candidate for a nonexistent job. I wonder if he thought I was a rough diamond or a raw carrot.

Even after I study the next 227 pages, I might still retain my raw carrot status. But an even more surprised and delighted raw carrot, to be sure.

Because Wolcott's so... great.

Because Wolcott's so... awesome.

Or, as Roy Edroso put it in a comment on my hot combs at dawn post on Facebook:

"Yeah, he's a treasure."

****

All you rough diamonds and raw carrots should order and read Wolcott's Lucking Out. And I know you knew that already because you're all so... perceptive.

Comments

[Skimmer]

That post was so... Nice.

Hopefully I can wrestle "Lucking Out" away from BG so I can read it myself.

Need to find out what happens to the "luscious string bean".

[Larry Jones]

So generous...

[Jennifer]

I'll never forget the day (long ago) I finished reading a Wolcott article and noticed the little line at the bottom... the one that mentioned his blog.

WHA??? I could have Wolcott every day?? ARE YOU KIDDING ME! It was, and is, a good thing.

Lucky for me, I'm only on page 31 of Lucking Out. And so far, it's been one gem after another.

I love those books where you realize if you were highlighting them, you'd just highlight the whole thing. :)

[ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©]

I rather doubt my generational counterparts at Princeton and Yale had their chains yanked so.

You never know, he ahemmed.
~

[Dan Leo]

One of the last curmudgeons of the old school.

Wait, is there even such a thing as a new-school curmudgeon?

[blue girl]

The formatting of this post is driving me nuts! Did Typepad "improve" things again?!

[Kevin Wolf]

Wolcott's on my short list of "who I wish I could write like" - which construction already tells you, no, I can't write like them. The them being Thurber and Wolcott and Hemingway and Chandler. I could add a few more but that's the first line.

BTW, have you seen the article in the latest New Yorker about Pauline Kael (whom I adore and always will)? It's by one Nathan Heller and he frankly, it seems to me, attacks admirers of Kael - especially if, god forbid, they actually knew her including Wolcott. It's as if Wolcott was the Greenspan to Kael's Ayn Rand - but with, in my view, a helluva lot less collateral damage. I love reading about Pauline Kael and I enjoyed the article, but still. Leave us not go overboard, as Popeye might say. (No, he'd just punch somebody's lights out - and they'd deserve it.)

[blue girl]

KW, I read about half of the Pauline Kael article, got distracted and haven't finished it yet.

Get your hands on a copy of Wolcott's book. There's a lot of Pauline Kael to devour. You'll love it.

[Claire Helene]

Oh man oh man. I have been L-O-V-I-N-G this book so much. I have found myself reading it aloud to random co-workers in the lunch room. I keep tagging pages with sticky notes. It's so so good.

[Claire Helene]

Oh my god, and the Pauline Kael chapter kept me up late. LOVE.

[Pinko Punko]

Good ol' Wolcott. He so New York, but there are a million New Yorks, more to the point Manhattan, but his Manhattan is a Manhattan where even the mundane seems interesting and embroidered with import, trivial or no.

Le sigh.

[Kathleen]

thanks for sharing BG. I will check it out!

[ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©]

Look, you got a shout-out from Roger Ailes.
~

[fish]

There was this other woman I liked to read on the internets with some regularity.

[Pinko Punko]

But not for the baking posts. Maybe the baking posts.

[Another Kiwi]

YEah, I luvs me some Wolcott too. His writing on ballet is super stuff, and I know nothing about ballet

[zombie rotten mcdonald]

cripes, I already have a bunch of books on the iPad I haven't read....

[blue girl]

No, PP. The baking posts.

Another Kiwi, I think there's quite a bit of great ballet in Wolcott's book. Haven't gotten there yet, though.

Zerm, you should get the real book and hold it in your real hands and really read it. For real.

[blue girl]

fish, you are inspiring me.

[Another Kiwi]

BG, you've been linked to by the man hisself! Go you!

[blue girl]

AK, Mr. W is very generous. And a link from him is a total thrill!

But, I did once send out a search party when Mr. W went missing. And it resulted in his safe return. So, you know, he owes me.

http://bluegirlredstate.typepad.com/blue_girl/2006/05/wolcott_alert_c.html

[ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©]

Awesome linkage, BG.
~

[Another Kiwi]

I got the shivers just reading that thread BG! Thank the lord that you and Jennifer were so vigilante!

[blue girl]

If Jennifer was not my true Poland, she was indeed my Tony Blair.

Long Live Jennifer!

[Silver Coast]

That's the funniest comment I've read in ages! Nice one BG.