This memoir of the tortured trajectory of the writer’s life was completely fascinating, if not always for the right reasons. Tom Grimes’ brave and excruciatingly honest account of sixteen rollercoaster years of his life is a startling documentation of the craziness, both literal and figurative, that can descend when a person decides to stake his entire life on becoming A Published Author. One small anecdote caught my eye: it’s reading Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises at community college that inspires Tom to become a writer; he wants to be Jake Barnes, journalist and the novel’s narrator. ‘The only problem was, I’d romanticized Jake’s life so completely that, until my professor pointed out this fact in class, I didn’t realize Jake was impotent.’ Beware all would-be writers with urgent ambitions. Whether he intends it or not, Tom Grimes is a terrible warning rather than an excellent example.
Ostensibly, the memoir is about the relationship between Tom and Frank Conway, author of a classic memoir, Stop-Time (and not much else), when they first meet, but more crucially, director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Tom is waiting tables in Key West, Florida, a struggling writer going nowhere, but all that is about to change. Having crudely snubbed him when they first meet, Frank Conway astounds Tom by phoning him after he submits his application to the workshop. ‘”I never call anyone,” he said, “but I’ve read your manuscript.”’ At this point, doors to the Aladdin’s Cave are flung wide, with Frank offering Tom his agent’s services, scholarships, and every other glittering prize he can think of. Tom enters the program at Iowa as teacher’s pet, his arrival heralded in advance on the strength of the early chapters of his literary novel about baseball. Over the next two years, buoyed by such spectacular support, Tom writes his novel with manic intensity. An earlier novel is picked up by a small publisher and put out to encouraging reviews, and a play he has written also finds backers and a theater.
The speed at which Tom’s star rises overwhelms him somewhat, and this sense of swimming out of his depth culminates in the auction for his novel, not quite the bidding frenzy he had thought it would be, but a painfully drawn-out day of escalating advances that never seem to come from the right people at the right time. Having already overthought this moment too many times, Tom has a whole shopping list of literary ideals – the right house, the right editor, the right price – but ultimately in the confusion of having to make a decision on the spot, he does not go with the house he has always wanted, but takes the larger offer from Little, Brown. In no time at all, the editor he signed with has switched jobs, leaving his novel an orphan. And now Icarus feels the intolerable heat of the sun on his wings. The novel is handled as ‘just another baseball novel’, the reviews are meagre and bad, the book never makes it out of hardback into paperback, and the chapters of the new novel he has recently begun are looked upon from this tainted perspective and roundly rejected.
But Frank’s faith doesn’t waver in his star pupil. He simply exerts himself even more to get teaching positions and grants and awards to sustain Tom while he works on his second novel. Frank doesn’t want to hear the negativity and brushes all the bad stuff off. As he negotiates for Tom, Tom has an unsettling moment of clarity. He knows Frank is genuine in his admiration, but ‘he also wanted to prove he still had the clout to bestow upon me a major literary honor solely on the strength of his name.’ For Frank’s star is currently in the ascendent – the novel he is writing has editors salivating and offering outrageous advances. And meanwhile, Tom Grimes sinks into delusion and paranoia in a mental breakdown from which his creativity never seems fully to recover (until, we suppose, this memoir).
Let us pause here for a moment and consider the impossible equation that is publishing. Tom accepts an advance of $42,000, with which he is a little disappointed, truth to tell, as Frank had thought he’d get $100,000 at least. The novel took him about three years to write, and he could have earned $10,000 a year if he’d stayed waiting tables. However,
A year after Seasons’s End’s publication, its paperback edition was nonexistent. Twenty-two hundred hardcover copies sold. Thirteen thousand were remaindered. And Little, Brown had recouped only forty-four hundred dollars of my forty-two thousand dollar advance.’
Ouch. He does publish his next novel, for a $17,500 advance. It had six reviews, mostly positive, but only sold 4,000 copies and again never made it to paperback. Even Frank Conway’s much-anticipated novel, Body & Soul, although it certainly does recoup its large advance, never makes it to the bestseller list and receives somewhat mixed reviews. What are we to make of all this? Tom Grimes’ memoir never comments upon it, viewing the situation entirely from the perspective of his own humiliation and thwarted longings. But what is going on here? And how is it sustainable for any of the players involved?
What does come across, loud and clear and somewhat mesmerising, is the painful solipcism of the author. Tom never spares himself any harsh criticism, but does he realize his own self-obsession? His sister attempts suicide a couple of times in the book, but having mentioned it and indeed flown back to see her, the narrative focuses exclusively on Tom’s research trip to the local baseball team (I’m sure they’re famous but baseball makes no impression on me and I can’t be bothered to look their name up). What takes his attention is the slighting behavior he has to endure from a journalist for the New Yorker, who asks about the publisher for his first novel and then seems to dismiss him and ignore him for the rest of the day; ‘his publishing pedigree made me feel more than ever like a literary mutt’ Grimes writes. It’s all so desperate, this hunt for status, this desire to be one of the players. In retrospect, Tom blames his mismanaged first auction on the fact that he had to handle it alone. ‘Frank should have been sitting behind his desk and I should have been sitting across from him in my chair,’ he writes, because nothing is so important as that auction, certainly not Frank’s life. It’s no wonder that when Tom falls ill, it’s paranoia – an anxiety disorder that arises paradoxically out of the fear that one is insignificant – that holds him in his grip.
And what of Frank, the wonderful mentor? Grimes argues that his story’s obvious trajectory, from success to failure, can actually be overwritten by a more important arc: ‘The meaningful story is: I arrived fatherless; I departed a son.’ But you can’t help but think that Frank’s input has been a lot of baseless enthusiasm that might have been swapped for more insightful literary critique.
If I’m making this sound like a bad book, I don’t mean to at all. It’s an excellent book. It is gripping and engrossing and, I fear, all too true to life. Grimes’ straightforward, show-don’t-tell style means that we are left with a lot of questions that a more self-aware and nuanced character portrait might have elucidated. But goodness it’s fascinating trying to come up with answers to those questions. An absolute must-read for anyone who thinks they not only want to write, but publish, too.
