A MAN BREAKS HIS LEG
I washed out of a bus onto the streets of San Francisco in
the late May 1982, a quasi-Boho, faux-hippie stoner with an anxious, teeming
brain, fleeing the Midwest to nowhere, drawn by obligation, not desire.
I started out living in the Tenderloin, first at the YMCA,
then at the former Will Rogers Hotel on Post and Taylor.
Later, I found a small room in an apartment at 25th
and Bryant in the Mission, for ninety dollars a month. That room alone probably
goes for nine hundred now I’d bet.
I read the San
Francisco Chronicle of course, acquainted myself with its team of veteran columnists,
by then all lifted by time to their upper years, echoes from as far back as the
1930s—Citizen Herb Caen, Art
Hoppe, Stanton Delaplane, and Charles McCabe. I didn’t know it then, but they
were quite a team.
I mention McCabe last, not because he was more important
than Caen, but because he is the more crucial link in this story.
This is because one day, as I recall, McCabe fell down some
steps and broke his leg.
BUT YOU’LL COME BACK
A STAR!
There is, I’d think, only so much even the most productive
writer can do with his leg encrusted in plaster. With McCabe on the sidelines,
laid up, out of the action, pining for the fjords, the Chronicle gave a member
of the “hip new generation” a seat at the table with the grizzled veterans.
Everyone assumed Mr. McCabe would return to his post, but it
didn’t work out that way. He passed the following year. And then, for the next thirty
years, we had the Jon
Carroll Column.
The first Jon Carroll Column I recall was a mock memoir
about Lenin. (That’s LENIN—L-E-N-I-N. No no, not the one who played in the
band, fer chrissakes! That’s—oh, never mind!)
I don’t recall the columnar details, but I chortled and
laughed, my brain stem lit by the bright splash of whimsy, obviously written under
the influence of S.J. Perelman, Monty Python and other conjurers of cheery
nonsense and daft impudence.
Beaming, I showed this Jon Carroll column to one of my
roommates, a man of some humor himself.
“Look!” I cried. “Funny humor!”
“Satirists!” he spat, indignant and aburst with pious
outrage. “I hate them! They should be banned! Thrown in jail! March them to the
salt mines!”
The man, as I was reminded, was a fundamentalist Communist.
The Lenin under satiric fire was a sacred figure to him, a god. (Not for the
first time had I offended someone with humor. My heels are crusted with the
blood of dozens, hundreds, of wounded souls—chin-up patriots and pacifist
vegans, jihadists and atheists alike. Yeah, I went too far on occasion. And
likely I will again, God forgive--)
[No, not the
band that did “My Sharona!” Please pay attention!]
BECAUSE JON CARROLL
TOLD ME TO
I read the Jon Carroll Column for almost thirty years and missed
but a few. I delighted in the offhand mention of a
favorite character actor in a garden column about villainous weeds; a
tribute to Monty Python involving a man with a bomb. And those darn cats, who
became a substitute for an ailurophile who seldom had any of his own. I played
with the cats in the Jon Carroll Column.
I also recall an odd fact he mentioned: No matter how much
we may love a particular column, Jon Carroll may not have the slightest memory
of writing it.
I occasionally wrote to him in my own (unmarketable) voice
of nonsense. After he turned me on to the Golden Age of Mystery author Michael Innes, I penned a mock tribute to his Powers of Influence: “I am a Creature of
the Media!” I declaimed. “When Jon Carroll says we should all start smoking, I run
out for a carton of Marlboros! And why not? Jon Carroll told me to!”)
In response to a column about names and how we live with
them, I told my story about how I evolved from my birth name to the one I own
now. Imagine my surprise when, days later, he tucked my birth name into the pull
quote on the side, indicating he would pursue that topic later. But, as often
happens in this column biz, the idea was run over by other, more urgent notions.
One day, I found an issue of Playboy I’d purchased years before for a refracted profile of
Thomas Pynchon. A few pages away, I found a profile of Dick Clark . . . penned
by Jon Carroll. It was both funny and made Mr. Clark seem a genuinely likeable
fellow (whereas Mr. Pynchon remained elusive). I learned there had been a world
before the Jon Carroll Column.
We met once during the late 1990s, at one of his popular workshops
on column writing (via the Learning Annex). He suggested we start our own
e-mail columns, as a door into the news business. I was still bright-eyed and
naïve then and I imagine many others of us followed this good advice.
Afterward, he signed my copy of Near Life Experiences, his collection of his columns. He knew well
who I was, expressed genuine delight that I had come, praised my work. He also
enjoyed several of my subsequent e-mail essays, especially an adventure in
which my comic avatar wrecked both our chances at captaining the helm of The New Yorker.
But success eluded me. Even Jon Carroll didn’t know what
vast changes awaited, how fast and hard those doors would close.
Jon Carroll had a great arm, threw a lot of different
pitches. Like mine, his interests covered the world. He was good funny, he was
good serious and so he rarely tired. Nor did he change much, even as the world
he wrote from, the platform from which he declaimed, changed radically under
and around us all.
Those changes changed our relationship. The “analog” Chronicle dwindled along with newsstands
(I never subscribed, always kept myself in quarters) and migrated online. I
read the Jon Carroll Column for free—pinched by guilt--for a few years. Then
the Chron erected the pay wall around
Jon Carroll (and also Leah Garchik, another frequent correspondent who dropped
my name into her column a few times.)
I made no attempt to cross that moat. I was sinking back into
mild poverty then, where I still remain. (Ironically, while I was drifting
away, I moved to the East Bay and then into Oakland, not far from Jon Carroll’s
garden domicile: The farther you get, the closer you are.) I contented myself
with occasional free Facebook postings. Occasionally, I’d mutter I’d get an
online Chronicle subscription as soon
as my econometrics improved. But they haven’t.
Another consequence of procrastination. And another
consequence of the Internet.
A BRIEF SIDE RANT
(BECAUSE THE INTERNET)
The Internet has perfected the craft of nickeling and diming
us to death. Its tentacles have choked off many a business, especially the
business of writing. On the Internet, “freedom” only means getting stuff for
free and that means a lot of people, talented people, working for nothing.
I don’t blame the Chronicle,
or The New York Times, The Daily Racing Form or The New Yorker (which I do cling to) for
erecting paywalls. Not one bit. Writers
have to be paid, not to mention the hard-working teams that get them
published. Good anything should cost money. So when you start grumbling about
my misplaced commas, wrong spellings, and general errors of fact, remember YOU’RE
GETTING THIS FOR FREE! And what’s more--
Wha--no, he wasn’t one of the guys who sang “Girl You Know It’s True!”
ENDINGS ARE HARD
The Jon Carroll Column could shake me out of my deepest
doldrums. It could inspire me when my writing was no better than a subprime
nursery reader. Pure humor, the well-turned joke for the sake of mischief, seems
out of fashion, at least in prose. But Jon Carroll kept the practice going.
Jack Handey, John Hodgman and the spotty “Shouts and Murmurs” corner of the New Yorker seem the only magicians
remaining. I’ve mostly withdrawn from this most tiny field.
As of last Friday, the Columnist Jon Carroll has retired now
to become the . . . Writing Something Else Jon Carroll, for life and work do
not, and should not, end with professional retirement (I’m a strict retirement
atheist. Even if I were trumped up with wealth, I’d prefer a job in a shoe
store to slow absorption by my couch.)
Jon Carroll recently stated on Facebook that he had much
prose left in him and would continue in another fashion.
That’s a cheery thought. There are times when I need good
laugh, more than anything. There may be no more Jon Carroll Columns but Jon
Carroll will be around to deliver.
This I know! Because Jon Carroll told me so!
Copyright 2015 by Thomas Burchfield
Photo by author
Thomas Burchfield’s latest (yet to
be published) novel is Butchertown, a
ripping, 1920s gangster shoot-‘em-up. He is also the author of the contemporary
Dracula novel Dragon's
Ark, winner of the IPPY, NIEA, and Halloween Book festival awards for
horror in 2012. He’s also author of the original screenplays Whackers
and The Uglies (e-book editions only). Published by Ambler House Publishing,
those three are available at Amazon
in various editions. You can also find his work at Barnes
and Noble, Powell's
Books, and Scribed. He also “friends” on Facebook, tweets on Twitter,
reads at Goodreads and drinks at various bars around the East Bay. You can also
join his e-mail list via tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net. He lives in Northern California with his wife,
Elizabeth.
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