(Not that You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions

DEAR OPRAH

Dear Oprah Winfrey,

I am writing to inform you that I cannot accept your kind offer to name this book as your October 2007 selection for Oprah’s Book Club™. I realize this letter may come as something of a shock, given my reputation for shameless self-promotion, which I hope precedes me. I also realize that authors who cross you tend to wind up with an awful lot of egg on their faces. Fortunately, I walk around most days with a four-cheese omelette hanging from my chin, so no problem there.

The truth is, I don’t give a shit how many books you sell. I don’t care how much dough you give away, or how many famous people you make cry. At the end of the day, you’re a TV star. You show up on a tiny screen and give lonely people a place to park their emotions for an hour. You’re the world’s leading retailer of inspiration. You’re the Wal-Mart of Hope.

Literature, though, isn’t supposed to be a convenient shopping experience. It’s a solitary imaginative endeavor aimed at arousing the anguish hidden inside us, the bad news of our hearts. There’s no celebrity shrink on hand to dispense hankies, no empathic host to buzz-manage our tears. There’s no assurance that our frail human experiment will end in triumph by the final commercial break. You tell me, Oprah: Should the Savior of Publishing be available with your basic cable package?

I can already hear your fans howling for my head. But from where I’m sitting, you’re just another zillionaire narcissist for whom fame (the illusion of unconditional love) has become the true goal and your public acts of good merely the means. Whatever noble cause you’re pimping this week, in the end you’re pimping yourself. Because if you really gave a shit about all us little people, you’d hoist your fluctuating ass out of the luxury self-help suite and express some outrage over the state of this nation: the young Americans snuffed over in Iraq, the poor ones economically sodomized by your pal Dubya, a realpolitik that dependably rewards bigotry over policy.

But outrage isn’t your thing, Oprah. To express such a vulgar emotion would violate the dictates of the brand. All we have to do to solve the crisis of empathy in this country is buy your lousy magazine, right? The one with you on the cover every single fucking month. Forget confronting evil. Just keep dreaming and hoping and snuffling with Oprah, keep gulping down the aspirational sugar pills. What a crock.

The answer is no.

Until we meet again,

Phil Donahue

P.S. Kidding! My real name is Steve Almond.

Dear Ms. Winfrey,

I’m not sure if you got the last letter I sent. I hope not. I don’t want to make excuses, so I’m not going to mention that I suffer from depression, or that my infant daughter was ill, or that I’d just finished a truly disappointing blackened grouper sandwich that left me queasy and out of sorts.

The point is contrition. I’d like to apologize for the things I wrote. I talked this over with some of the folks at my publishing house yesterday—there were twelve in all, I guess—and they felt that I had done both of us a disservice by refusing your gracious (potential) offer to select my book for Oprah’s Book Club™. Their contention was that insulting you may have gratified my own righteous indignation, but did little to promote the greater cause we share. That crack about your ass, for instance. I didn’t mean that it literally fluctuates.

A lot of this boils down to insecurity. There’s a part of me that worries you won’t really choose my book for Oprah’s Book Club™. The letter was my way of rejecting you before you could reject me. Pretty third-grade on my part.

I have deep respect for the work you do, not just as a media figure, but as a literary philanthropist. You could easily have hitched your wagon to the Freakshow Express, like Springer. Instead, you’ve spent your cultural capital encouraging people to read writers like Toni Morrison and William Faulkner. That I failed to acknowledge this reflects nothing beyond my own chronic bitterness.

This is all by way of saying that, on the off chance that you have read my previous letter, I hope you will file it under Unintended Satire, or perhaps Temporary Dementia. Rest assured, I have no plans to pull a Franzen. It would be an honor to appear on your show. And I promise not to jump on your couch! (Unless you’d like me to.)

Yours in apology & admiration,

Steve Almond

Dear Oprah,

This is going to seem a little crazy, but I’m enclosing another copy of the letter I sent along earlier this week. I know how much mail you must get. Better safe than sorry.

Great show yesterday, by the way! I have to admit that I had not given a great deal of thought to the challenges of menopause, but I appreciated how you handled the jerk who referred to his wife as Señora Hot Flasha. My wife and I had a long talk after the show and I came away with a whole new perspective. It’s like you say, "Menopause isn’t a process, people, it’s a journey."

Let’s talk soon,

Steve

P.S. I’ve enclosed a photo of our little angel. That’s her peeking out from an official Oprah 4 Prez tote bag. What can I tell you—she’s a fan!

Oprah,

One thought I had, in terms of planning—one of the essays in my book is about Condoleezza Rice. Long story short, I slam her pretty hard. I’m thinking it might be cool to do a show that’s about healing the rift between Condoleezza and myself. She could (for instance) apologize for the lies that got us into the Iraq war, and I could apologize for referring to her as the President’s office wife. Then we might hug. Or do some music together. Or both.

Think about it.

Steve

Oprah!

Just a silly note to tell you that my wife and I rented The Color Purple. Again. What can I tell you? You got jobbed at the Oscars. Your performance made Anjelica Huston’s look like dinner theater. Also: my publicist was wondering when I might hear back from you. (I explained about your schedule, but you know how these people get.)

Also also: Would it be too forward of me to refer to you, in future correspondences, as my homegirl?

Oprah in ’08!

Steve

Dearest O,

Last night I was looking through The Uncommon Wisdom of Oprah Winfrey: A Portrait in Her Own Words and I came across this quote:

I don’t do anything unless it feels good. I don’t move on logic. I move on my gut. And I have a good gut!

You were talking about your business philosophy. But it got me thinking about your actual gut, and the way the tabloids cover it so obsessively. It’s like, in a way, your body has become public property, up there on display for everybody to gawk at and poke and prod. I’m sure this thought has occurred to you a few million times, but here you are, the most influential black woman in human history, and somehow you’re still the white man’s slave.

That’s fucked up.

Steve

Oprahlove,

I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but I get a bad feeling about Stedman. Every time I see a photo of him, I think: Snidely Whiplash. Lord knows you’ve waited long enough to find a man who will treat you right. But I can’t help feeling he’s sponging off you. It’s like when TomKat snubbed you for their wedding. I know you rose above that, but when I think about that ungrateful little Scientology hobbit and the way he frog-marches his stick-figure wifey around—I don’t know, it just gnaws at me.

I guess I feel kind of protective of you is what I’m saying.

I hope that’s all right.

Steve

Special Ops!

Given the hours you keep, I’m not upset you haven’t yet responded to my letters. I will say that certain folks at my publishing house have begun to express some concern. But I’m not even writing about that.

I’m writing because I had this strange dream last night. I was back in California (where I grew up) wandering through a desert; it must have been the Mojave. I was very weak and my tongue had swollen into a giant cigarette filter and I could feel this immense grinding weight on my shoulders. Every few steps the sun struck like a whip. The only thing I could think to do is what you advise in A Journal of Daily Renewal. I closed my eyes and burrowed into my spirit place and even though I was technically in the midst of a dream, I could see what the dream meant: I was experiencing the hardships my ancestors had as slaves in Egypt. I was still carrying around all that negative energy. So I stopped dead in my tracks and took ten cleansing breaths. When I opened my eyes the weight was gone and I was standing before the gates of the Promised Land. Only the Promised Land wasn’t in Palestine, it was in Montecito. It was your 42-acre mountain view estate! I opened my right fist and there was a slip of paper with the security code for the gate. So up the winding path I flew, past the Lake of Serenity and the Rejuvenation Redwoods and the blinding lawns. It all looked exactly like it does in the Special Collector’s Edition DVD of Oprah’s Legends Weekend. Then I came to a huge house, which, it turned out, belonged to the caretaker, who was Rosie O’Donnell, only she was thin so I didn’t recognize her at first. She pointed to a speck in the distance. You want the Main House, spanks. It took a long time to reach the main house, even without the stone block on my shoulders. There were little golf carts around, but I knew that would be cheating. I was on a walkabout, not a golfcartabout. Finally, I reached your home and I rang the doorbell and banged on all the doors and windows. But you didn’t answer. No one answered.

Bottom-line me here: Should I be worried?

Steve

Dear Oprah:

It’s been a few months now since we began this correspondence, and I have to be honest. I’m not sure you’re holding up your end of the bargain. I realize we got off on the wrong foot. It’s also true that one or more of my previous letters may have been written under the influence of mild psychotropics. But that’s not the issue. The issue is business. You’ve got 20 million readers to satisfy and I’ve got a book so hot it’s burning a hole in my publisher’s panties. I’m trying to tell you that, from my end, all is forgiven.

Also: I’m not going to stop writing until we make this happen. To quote a certain someone, I don’t believe in failure!

Still at the same address,

Steve Almond

Dear Oprah,

You’re going to think wow when you open the enclosed gift.

You recognize that little face, no?

Need a hint?

It’s my daughter! Josephine.

She’s a lot bigger than the photo I sent along four months ago, right? Try 21 pounds (minus whatever she lost in transit). That’s almost as big as the turkey you and Stedman served to those autistic orphans last Thanksgiving!

Anyway, it occurred to me last night, in the midst of re-reading The Gospel According to Oprah, that a gesture of trust was needed to seal the bond between us. So here she is, the little gal I call our practice baby. She’s been pretty good, overall. A bit flatulent after certain meals, but who isn’t? Both my wife and I feel that you’ll make an amazing mother to our (former) daughter.

I know what you’re thinking: Hey Steve, won’t adopting your child complicate my plan to select your book for Oprah’s Book Club™? Won’t people cry nepotism and/or bribery? Of course they will! And you know what the sponsors will be crying? Ratings! Especially after your special double episode featuring a tearful author/daughter reunion, with special guest babysitter…Condi Rice!

Seriously, homegirl: I’ve got goose bumps on my scalp.

Steve

P.S. The baby isn’t eating solid food just yet, so the missus expressed some milk for her. Please refrigerate immediately.

EVERYTHING WAS BEAUTIFUL AND NOTHING HURT

THE FAILED PROPHECY OF KURT VONNEGUT

(and How It Saved My Life)

Part One

You are writing for strangers.

Face the audience of strangers.

It would be fair to call me one of the Kurt Vonnegut cult, though a member in poor standing. I read all of his books in high school and college, most of them six times, and I’m sure I walked around for a good number of years spouting little Vonnuggets of wisdom, as his followers so incessantly do.

I devoted most of my senior year in college to a detailed study of his work, writing a thesis titled Authorial Presence in the Works of Kurt Vonnegut, a copy of which I recently asked my mother to send me, in her capacity as Chief Curator of the Steve Almond Archives, a capacity, I should add, that she views as the necessary burden of having raised an itinerant narcissist. The Archives have fallen on hard times in the past few years, the result being that the original bound copy of the document—which I feel compelled to note was dedicated to the Chief Curator—no longer exists. It was apparently lent out to my uncle Peter, a man whose own literary archive resides in the backseat of his car.

The Chief Curator was able to find, after what she described as many hours of excavation, a draft of the thesis, which included the proofreading marks of my college pal James Shiffer, who, perhaps not coincidentally, no longer speaks to me. The last page bore a circular stamp at the bottom right. I initially took this to be some sort of academic notarization before coming to recognize it as a large, oddly filigreed coffee stain.

I WAS REVISITING my thesis because I had been asked to write an appreciation of Vonnegut, a request I initially refused. I was at work on a dying novel, after all, and I hate to be distracted in the midst of such satisfying masochism. But the request lingered. It activated certain deeply rooted fanboy tendencies. I started thinking about how much Vonnegut had meant to me, and why, and whether writing about him might lead to a rendezvous. That was what I wanted. I wanted to interview him. I wanted to sit around on his porch smoking Pall Malls with him, or at least breathing in his secondhand smoke.

Note: This is the fantasy of every single Vonnegut fan.

EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO, upon my successful expulsion from college, I was invited to stay with a friend of my girlfriend, out in Sagaponeck, Long Island. I was on the brink of breaking up with this particular girlfriend. But it was also true that these friends of hers were neighbors of Vonnegut. Friends, actually. (They called him Kurt!) So I took a bus out there and hung around for a few days, feeling poor and unsophisticated and properly caddish. In my backpack was a bound copy of my thesis.

All weekend, I fantasized about dropping it off in his mailbox, with a note explaining that I was staying just down the road. He was a busy guy, and a notorious grouch, so he wouldn’t read my thesis immediately. But eventually he’d crack the thing and read a few pages and realize, with a discernable jolt, that, by God, this young Almond fellow knew a few things, that I alone among his legion of literary investigators had divined his essence, understood his crusade, could be trusted with his secrets. This would lead to an invite for cocktails, a long wistful discussion, many Pall Malls, and his eventual decision to adopt me.

But I chickened out.

CLUCK CLUCK.

FAST-FORWARD TO EARLY 2006. I had agreed to write about Vonnegut. But the word on the street was that no one got to Vonnegut. The best I could hope for was to get a note to his attorney, one Donald Farber. I imagined this Farber as a dead ringer for Bela Lugosi, with a massive desk upon which sat a single small rubber stamp. From time to time, a small, possibly deformed assistant would place a document before him, allowing Farber the solemn pleasure of whacking a bright red No on each request.

Around this time, I traveled down to Hartford, Connecticut,¹ for a reading and by chance started thumbing through a local paper and suddenly saw Kurt Vonnegut staring at me. He was slated to appear at something called the Connecticut Forum, along with authors Joyce Carol Oates and Jennifer Weiner. This was obviously kismet, but I managed not to notice, and immediately filed this information away in the precise part of my brain that has been eroded by pot smoke. The newspaper got tossed into my own backseat archive.

A month later, while uncharacteristically cleaning my car, I came upon the ad for the Connecticut Forum, which was taking place the very next evening. I was no longer suffering under the delusion that I would be able to contact Vonnegut directly. And thus, a notion now took root inside my pointy little head: I had to go see Kurt Vonnegut. I had to drive down to Hartford and ask him for an interview. I became convinced this would be my one and only shot at a face-to-face. The man was eighty-three years old. He had been smoking those Pall Malls (unfiltered) for longer than my parents have been alive. To put it indelicately: He would soon be dead.

THE CONNECTICUT FORUM event was sold out, naturally. But my friend Catherine, who appears to know every person of consequence in Hartford, managed to finagle me a ticket. And not just to the panel, but to the cocktail reception and dinner beforehand, at which the authors would be appearing.

I spent all that Friday composing a brief letter of introduction² and rehearsing what I would say to Vonnegut. I bought a special envelope, one that would fit into his pocket. I got a haircut. For the first time in years, I had a pair of pants dry-cleaned.

ABOUT THE HAIRCUT: It was the worst of my adult life. I had asked my stylist Linda to make sure the bangs weren’t too long, as I didn’t like the idea of looking shaggy for Vonnegut. I wanted him to be able to see my eyes, and specifically the nobility shining forth from them. But Linda left the bangs about a half-inch short and boxy at the corners. I looked like a Beatle, if you can imagine the Beatles reuniting for a tour at age forty and returning (ill-advisedly) to the moptop look.

ANOTHER IRRELEVANT DETAIL: On the way down to Hartford I was pulled over by a cop for eating a ham sandwich.

It is illegal to eat pork on Connecticut byways.

I ARRIVED IN Hartford in an addled state. It did not help that I was attending what I would call a corporate event. Honestly, I had no idea what the Connecticut Forum was. But it was immediately apparent they have a lot of money. As soon as Catherine and I arrived at the venue we started to encounter people who had that unmistakable sheen of prosperity: tailored suits, jewelry, the subtle dermal cross-hatchings of a ski tan.

We got talking to one such couple in the elevator.

Are you all Vonnegut fans? I asked.

Not really, the man said. He was probably in his midfifties. I’ve never read any of his books.

"None of them? Not even Slaughterhouse-Five?"

He shook his head.

What about Joyce Carol Oates?

"What has she written?" he asked pleasantly.

AND THIS IS WHAT I mean by a corporate event. Most of the people at this cocktail/dinner thingee were there not because they were fans of the authors, but because it was a way of supporting the arts, being a good corporate citizen.

Being a good corporate citizen means shaving an infinitesimal portion from your profits—profits that have skyrocketed as the government has dedicated itself to the financial aggrandizement of the private sector while virtually eliminating public funding for the arts (forget the poor)—and politely tossing it at programs like the Connecticut Forum, where lots of well-heeled patrons can experience the joys of literature or, at least, a literary dog and pony show, along with noshing on some truly excellent hors d’oeuvres.

I’m sounding angry here. What I felt in talking with these folks in the elevator was something closer to despair.

THE COCKTAIL RECEPTION was in a massive lobby. I staked out a spot near the table with the Kurt Vonnegut sign and gulped a glass of wine and said hello to my official hosts, the good people of Bank of America. They were all incredibly nice. This is one of the characteristics of the rich: If you are dressed properly, and don’t appear to want their money, they are incredibly nice.

After a while, one of the guys in our circle said, Isn’t that him? We all turned and there was Kurt Vonnegut, shuffling toward his little table. I had never seen Vonnegut in any form other than his author photo. I expected a towering figure with a froth of brown curls. But gravity had tamped him down; his famous curls were ashy and shorn.

We forget what the truly old look like in this culture, because we tuck them away in group homes when they start to look too scary.³. Vonnegut was terribly frail. The flesh had shrunk away from his eyes and gathered in folds above his collar. He stared out at the room full of strangers and sighed.

That’s so sad! Catherine said. He’s going to sit there and nobody is going to go up and talk to him.

It was sad. For about thirty seconds, none of us could work up the nerve to approach Kurt Vonnegut. He was such a legend, so much larger than life in the minds of his fans, and here he was, revealed as a mere mortal, closer to tortoise than god.

This was my big chance. I needed to move. But I couldn’t do it. My whole plan felt suddenly absurd. Pushy. Or worse than pushy—grabby. I didn’t want to be just one more person grabbing at the guy. This would dishonor my status as a true fan. By the time I’d decided I was being a ninny (twenty-four seconds later) a young couple had walked up to him, and this set off a kind of Brownian surge. He was immediately enveloped by people, all of whom wanted to speak with him at the same time.

A bald fellow at the back of the scrum shouted out, Hey Kurt! I was in your house in Cape Cod back in 1969! Your nephew invited me to a party.

Is that so? Vonnegut’s voice was faint and wheezy.

Someone asked about his kids and he ticked off their names. Mark went crazy, he said, referring to his eldest son. But he’s okay now. He wrote a fine book.

"Eden Express! said a woman with a camera. I almost brought my copy."

Vonnegut coughed delicately. He looked pleased.

An eager-looking blond woman asked him what he thought of George W. Bush.

He makes me wish Nixon were still president, Vonnegut muttered.

Who do you think was the greatest president in your lifetime?

I was fortunate to have lived during the reign of a man named Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He added, to no one in particular, It was the polio that made him compassionate, you know. Being sick like that.

You look great, someone else said.

Nonsense, he said.

A pretty girl with auburn hair stepped shyly into Vonnegut’s view.

This girl came all the way from California to see you! the blond woman exclaimed.

Why would you do that, my dear? It’s sunny in California!

The girl was trembling a little. She wore a white blouse that framed her breasts. There was a moment of suspense while she stood, flushed, struggling to speak. I wanted to thank you, she stammered. Reading your work was what made me start to think for myself.

Vonnegut gazed at her. There was nothing lascivious in his eyes. He was merely sipping at her beauty. She radiated transference. It was as if Vonnegut were her father, some idealized version, which, of course, he was.

BY THE TIME