Counting Cuttings on the Wall

I use old photos as bookmarks, like this snap above in my ninth-floor Puck Building New York Press office; one employed for Maggie Shipstead’s 2012 debut novel Seating Arrangements. The satire of bluebloods (or passing themselves off as such) set on the fictional New England island Waskeke, where a WASP clan gathers for a summer wedding, is pretty good. But that qualifier is warranted, since the book has languished on a bedside table for nine months—20 pages here, 15 pages there—passed over for more engaging fare, recently Clare Sestanovich’s excellent Ask Me Again and Amy Tintera’s Listen For The Lie, which isn’t particularly well-written but is a killer whodunit.

I finally polished off Seating Arrangements over the weekend—Iowa Writers’ Workship-type ending—and was struck by a depressing passage, as antagonist Winn Van Meter, a weaselly social climber nearing 60, whose daughter Daphne is the bride, muses about the future.

“He wasn’t sure he had ever been as happy as Daphne looked. If he had, he could not remember, nor did he have any hope of being so again in the future. There weren’t any great surprises in store for him, no twists of fate that would uncover new deposits of happiness. Grandchildren would be pleasant, but with his luck they would all be girls… He had chosen the walls of his prison, and they suited him: this house [on Waskeke] and the house in Connecticut, his clubs, the crystalline windows of his office, the confines of Biddy’s [his wife] embrace, the words ‘husband’ and ‘father’ on a tombstone… He had almost everything he could think to want, and yet still ambivalence bleached his world to an anemic pallor.”

Talk about living in a lunchbox!

Maybe that’s a common sentiment among aging men (although not so baldly solipsistic and bitter), regardless of social class. I’ll be 70 in a year and can’t comprehend self-pitying Winn Van Meter’s “anemic pallor,” and though you can never divine the inner thoughts of others, longtime friends of mine—some going back to grade school, college and early-career days—are not only relieved they’re still alive but also vibrant, taking pleasure in new pursuits and making the most of it.

At 25, when everything moves so fast, I couldn’t imagine the thrill of seeing, and hanging out, with a deer in (Horace) my backyard decades from then, staring for half an hour at the Arabian Sea with three of my brothers just outside our hotel in Mumbai, receiving a new Michael Gentile painting for my birthday or still getting a kick out of hearing a rapid-fire, mock-trashy conversation between two people at a coffee shop. Maybe that doesn’t hit the decibel level of seeing Mick Jagger and Stevie Wonder singing “Uptight” at Madison Square Garden in 1972 or my breath taken away upon the first sight of my wife at Tribeca’s Riverrun in 1989, but those are once-in-a-lifetime thunderbolts and as a guarded optimist I believe there are more highlights that “twists of fate” will deliver.

Since I was a teenager I’ve tacked idiosyncratic curios on walls, whether at work or home, and this NYC photo is typical: I’d need a magnifying glass to identify all the items—which extend way beyond this image—but I spy a Chip Simons picture on the lower left; an ’85 Baltimore shot of Gentile, me and Phyllis Orrick; Red Sox memorabilia; a promo pic for the Pogues; candid photos of relatives; and front-pages and inside clippings from American and U.K. newspapers.

Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: Roddy Doyle’s The Van, Pauline Kael’s Movie Love, P.J. O’Rourke’s Parliament of Whores and James B. Stewart’s Den of Thieves are published; the UK has the fastest rising unemployment of all European Community countries; Manchester United wins the European Cup; the first Sumo tournament held outside Japan is at London’s Royal Albert Hall; the Rolling Stones sign a new contract with Virgin Records; Eastern Air Lines and Pan Am shut down; William Kennedy Smith has his hands full in Palm Beach, FL; Doug (including Porkchop) airs for first time; Austin Butler is born and Lee Remick dies; Brandon Tartikoff is appointed head of Paramount Pictures; and Jeff Bagwell is the National League’s Rookie of the Year.

—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023