I’LL SPARE YOU, OR NOT

 
I’ve written several unpublished novels. My best was about a married couple with a kid who died from SIDS. An editor at HarperCollins liked it. She wrote, “But we need you to change it to a female narrator.”

OK, done.

My lit agent told me, “If you don’t want to change the narrator’s sex, don’t. I can sell it as is.”

OK, I’ll leave it as is.

My agent shopped the manuscript around. Evocative — as praise — showed up a lot – two years of evocatives. In the end, nothing. I probably should have rewritten the book.

I did. I sent the revised version back to HarperCollins, but the editor was gone. Editors jump around a lot. Susan Orlean had about 10 editors on her first book.

I switched to non-fiction, like Orlean. I wrote Bodegas and Bagels, a trade paperback about the Americanization of the bagel. It came out in 2017 and didn’t go anywhere.

I wrote My Main Man, Maimonides (2021). The Jewish Review of Books gave it five dreidels. Didn’t go anywhere, either.

Now I’m working on an e-book about the end of the world. The main character is a Jewish Studies prof who subsists solely on baba ganoush during the famine. I’ll self-publish. Annoying, I know . . . everybody is self-publishing and clogging the Quality Lit pipeline.

This morning I wrote a poem, “I Smoke my Own Lox.” I’ll paste it below.

No, I’ll spare you. I’ll put it in my book and make you to buy it.

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Yiddishe Cup plays a free concert 7 pm this Sunday (June 28), Alma Theater, Cain Park, Cleveland Heights.