Part 70 (2/2)

'Umney's Last Case' - a pastiche - obviously - and paired with 'The Doctor's Case' for that reason, but this one is a little more ambitious. I have loved Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald pa.s.sionately since I discovered them in college (although I find it both instructive and a little scary to note that, while Chandler continues to be read and discussed, Macdonald's highly praised Lew Archer novels are now little-known artifacts outside the small circle of livre noir fans), and I think again it was the language of these novels which so fired my imagination; it opened a whole new way of seeing, one that appealed fiercely to the heart and mind of the lonely young man I was at that time.

It was also a style which was lethally easy to copy, as half a hundred novelists have discovered in the last twenty or thirty years. For a long time I steered clear of that Chandlerian voice, because I had nothing to use it for . . . nothing to say in the tones of Philip Marlowe that was mine.

Then one day I did. 'Write what you know,' the Wise Old Dudes tell us poor cemetery remnants of Sterne and d.i.c.kens and Defoe and Melville, and for me, that means teaching, writing, and playing the guitar . . . though not necessarily in that order. As far as my own career-within-a-career of writing about writing goes, I'm reminded of a line I heard Chet Atkins toss off on Austin City Limits one night. He looked up at the audience after a minute or two of fruitless guitar-tuning and said, 'It took me about twenty-five years to find out I wasn't very good at this part of it, and by then I was too rich to quit.'

Same thing happened to me. I seem destined to keep going back to that peculiar little town - whether you call it Rock and Roll Heaven, Oregon; Gatlin, Nebraska; or Willow, Maine - and I also seem destined to keep going back to what I do. The question, which haunts and nags and won't 'ever completely let go is this one: Who am I when I write? Who are you, for that matter? Exactly what is happening here, and why, and does it matter?

So, with these questions in mind, I pulled on my Sam Spade fedora, lit up a Lucky (metaphorically speaking, these days) and started to write. 'Umney's Last Case' was the result, and of all the stories in this volume, it's the one I like the best. This is its first publication.

'Head Down' - my first writing for pay was sports writing (for a while I was the entire sports department of the weekly Lisbon Enterprise), but that didn't make this any easier. My proximity to the Bangor West All-Star team when it mounted its unlikely charge on the State Champions.h.i.+p was either pure luck or pure fate, depending on where you stand in regard to the possible existence of a higher power. I tend toward the higher power thesis, but in either case, I was only there because my son was on the team. Nevertheless, I quickly realized - more quickly than Dave Mansfield, Ron St. Pierre, or Neil Waterman, I think - that something pretty extraordinary was either happening or trying to happen. I didn't want to write about it, particularly, but something kept telling me I was supposed to write about it.

My method of working when I feel out of my depth is brutally simple: I lower my own head and run as fast as I can, as long as I can. That was what I did here, gathering doc.u.mentation like a mad packrat and simply trying to keep up with the team. For a month or so it was like living inside one of those corny sports novels with which many of us guys have whiled away our duller afternoon study-halls: Go Up for Glory, Power Forward, and occasional bright standouts like John R. Tunis's The Kid from Tomkinsville.

Hard or not, 'Head Down' was the opportunity of a lifetime, and before I was done, Chip McGrath of The New Yorker had coaxed the best nonfiction writing of my life out of me. I thank him for that, but I owe the most thanks to Owen and his teammates, who first made the story happen and then gave me permission to publish my version of it.

'Brooklyn August' - it pairs with 'Head Down,' of course, but there's a better reason for putting it here, at what is almost the end of this long book: it has escaped the wearisome cage of its creator's questionable reputation and lived its own placid life quite apart from him. It has been reprinted several times in various anthologies of baseball curiosa, and appears to have been selected upon each occasion by editors who seem not to have the slightest idea of who I'm supposed to be or what it is I'm supposed to do. And I really like that.

Okay; stick it on the shelf and take care of yourself until we meet again. Read a few good books, and if one of your brothers or sisters falls down and you see it happen, pick him or her up. After all, next time you might be the one who needs a hand . . . or a little help getting that pesky finger out of the drain, for that matter.

Bangor, Maine.

September 16, 1992.

By Stephen King and published by.

New English Library.

Carrie.

'Salem's Lot The s.h.i.+ning.

Night s.h.i.+ft The Stand.

By Stephen King as Richard Bachman.

Thinner.

The Bachman Books.

Published by Hodder Stoughton Christine.

Pet Sematary It Misery.

The Tommyknockers The Dark Half.

The Stand: the Complete and Uncut Edition.

Four Past Midnight.

Needful Things.

Gerald's Game.

Dolores Claiborne.

end.

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