Essays

An “oozing wound letter”
January 28, 2025

An “oozing wound letter”

I don’t want to write a newsletter this month. I want to write the Great American Novel, a symphony to rival anything by Bach, two hit movies, the funniest knock-knock joke in history, and a grocery list so concise and yet so metaphorically complex that a thousand years from now it will be considered the one document that most vividly conveys the scope, texture, and meaning of life in our time. To accomplish all that, I’ll need weekends of deep relaxation while floating in a sensory-deprivation tank with intravenous nutrition, so I’ve really only got 23 weekdays to accomplish my creative goals before February.

Anyway, what good is a newsletter? Polls show that only 15% of the public still believes what the news media tells them, so having the word “news” in a publication seems to ensure no one will trust it enough to read it. The thing might attract more people if we called it an “oozing wound letter” although that risks appealing to a disturbed and disturbing readership.

Another issue I wish to address is that I never have any real news to impart in this publication. Oh, I sometimes reveal the title and cover of a forthcoming novel, like Going Home in the Dark, which will be published in May, but that’s not news. That’s just shameless self-promotion. It would be news if I could report that sixteen people were injured in a multi-car accident on the New Jersey Turnpike because someone was reading Going Home in the Dark while driving. However, it hasn’t happened yet, so it’s only fake news, and I would not stoop to that.

As regular readers of this publication know, I sometimes seek advice and assistance from the marvelous actress Naomi Watts, who was fabulous in The Impossible and other movies. Although she is a lovely and compassionate person with a big heart, she never returns my calls, for she leads a busy life with so many obligations that I don’t know how she does all that she does. Nevertheless, for reasons that I am unable to explain even to myself, I continue to reach out to her, as I did in an attempt to learn if she might have an idea what to call this publication other than a “newsletter.” Hearing from her is not as important as just knowing she is out there. It is comforting just to know she is out there.

I did receive a letter from Tom Selleck, whom I thought must be responding to my attempt to reach out to him, but it was, curiously, a pamphlet about the advantages of taking a reverse mortgage on our house, a subject in which I have no interest. When I reached out to Ryan Reynolds, he reached back with a colorful pamphlet about obtaining cell-phone service from something called Mint. So a lot of important people know I value their advice and they want to help me, but for some reason they don’t always seem to grasp what advice I’m seeking.

Consequently, I don’t know how to resolve this complicated newsletter issue, and for now I will—as they say in voodoo circles—“put a pin in it” and get back to fulfilling the creative ambitions I listed in the first paragraph. I have been thinking about that “best ever” knock-knock joke, and already I have this: “Knock-knock. Who’s There?” Not bad for the first day.

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