Introduction to the new edition

The so-called style of my writing bears little resemblance to the way I speak. In fact, no resemblance. Wish I could afford the luxury!

Writing, like music or dancing, hungers for that certain rhythm, that beat, that sound. Without it, no matter how talented the artist, his or her efforts get heaped on top of a pile, and then that gets heaped atop another pile. And no matter how high the pile rises, invariably it slides into the world of the unremembered.

What joy there must be in writing a novel. Facing that empty page each day, putting pen to paper, with a never-ceasing array of options and characters to invent. The allure of the boundless narrative. Eenie . . . meenie . . . minie . . . moe. Pick a character by the toe. If he hollers? Stick a narrative up his you-know. . . . Then, with pleasure, let ’im go. . . .

You want to have fun writing? That’s the way to do it.

Nonfiction? Well, that’s a different animal. Each day, sure, you face that same empty page. But this time there’s little joy, mucho trauma. Days turn to weeks, weeks to months. That empty page is still there, but you’ve got to fill it . . . with the truth.

Damn it! you think. Can’t I do something to pick up the pace in this chapter? Get some action goin’ here? Slip in a laugh or two? Try for a tear or two? Can’t I get one of these characters to do something a little different? Make things work out better?

WRONG! Doesn’t work that way.

Sure, I could try it. Plenty of people have. But they’d burn me at the stake! Hey, I’m a class act. A writer of documented nonfiction. I write the real shit!

The hard part is, making sure it doesn’t read like shit.

To tell the truth . . . and nothin’ but the truth . . . yet stick a bit of lightnin’ up the reader’s ass—that’s one mean hat trick. Don’t care how talented you are, or think you are. If you want to make truth jump from the page, you need a hook!

So how did I do it? How did I get this goddamn life onto the page?

It didn’t come easy. For more than a month I was alone, talking to myself on an all-but-deserted island. What a high! Suckin’ up them sounds of crickets, birds, and weird tropical winds. Thoughts began bulgin’ from my head—BIG! By purpose, I let ’em float, not search their way to paper. I was waitin’ to hear them bells, a beat, a chord, anything to protect my brain’s graphic thoughts from the enemy of false humility and puff. A sound that would keep ’em ingenuous, not self-serving.

Then, one day, I was on that empty beach. I had just finished grilling a succulent lobster, when a huge white pelican with arrowlike speed zoomed out of the sky straight at my fuckin’ head. Thought he was gonna take it off.

WHAM!

Instead, he copped my lobster.

As I squinted into the sun, lookin’ for the bird, it hit me. The survival of the fittest . . . the law of the jungle . . .

Shrieking like a cheerleader, I ran down the beach.

“I got it! I got it! I got my motherfuckin’ hook!”

One I would never have found in the maze of what’s thought of as civilization.

Forget grammatical perfection. Leave that to the pens of the more talented. Who the fuck wants to go toe-to-toe with George Bernard Shaw, anyway? Shock ’em with the unexpected! Put pen to paper to the gruffness of the caveman’s growl, the purr of the cat . . . the hiss of the rattlesnake . . . the sound of that bird winging down out of the sky. Lash out at them down-and-dirties with a sting of a crocodile’s tail. Staccato them painful mistakes with the swiftness of a jaguar on the hunt. Let them pleasures bellow out big with the roar of the lion! Taste them tiny successes with the litheness of a deer at play . . .

Be a baboon. That’s right, a baboon! Fuck ’em! Let ’em laugh at you. But be you. Be an original!

It is in that spirit I ask you to accept my writing—

to the beat of a different drummer—

as you turn the pages of The Kid Stays in the Picture.

 

Robert Evans

Beverly Hills, California

January 2013