johnweirdo

Sun, 09 Apr 2006 20:07:22 -0500

Dear Gothamist: It's me John Weir, the guy who wrote *What I Did Wrong*. Thanks for writing about it! Gosh, your plot synopsis makes the book sound kind of fun, and I'm grateful for that. And thanks for the kindest objection of all: that you wished I'd written more. You should know that at one point, the damned book - which I wrote over 8 years - was 700 pages long, and that I cut it and cut it and cut it until it was the size it is now. Well, the problem was, I kept hitting the same emotional note over and over, especially in the stuff with Zack: Tom watches Zack die, Tom is overwhelmed by feelings of rage and loss, isn't death weird? Over and over, I hit that note. So I kind of had to pick the most effective stuff, and cut back to that. I think of the book as more of a very long lyric poem where the lines go all the way acros the page, than a novel. Or else maybe it's a Fellini movie (I should be so lucky!), or, um, it's kind of modelled on Jane Fonda's monologues to her shrink in *Klute*. I never really wanted it to be a novel. A Joan Didion essay crossed with *Death of a Salesman*? I had lots of other models in mind besides novels. French novels! Forgive me for being pretentious. Do you know Michel Leiris? I don't think you can call his books novels, actually. Harrowing-and-banal self-confessionals. Or I was wanting it to be as condensed, contained, non-fictional-but-with-fictional-elements, heartbreaking and beautiful as James Baldwin's essay - really, it's not just an essay, it's a cathedral - "Notes of a Native Son." An essay that is also a novel in 25 pages. And then certain aspects of the book were so intermingled with what was happening to me in my everyday ordinary life that, in order to follow each of the relationships in the book to its logical conclusion, I would have had to wait like another 5 years for certain things in my own life to resolve themselves. I don't know, I have a weird way of writing: I rehearse stuff in my life, and then I write it down. My life is like a tech rehearsal for my writing. So. Anyway. The stuff you said about me is really flattering, and thanks. Best, John Weir.

Gothamist: Opinionist: What I Did Wrong

johnweirdo