Nelson Valjean, �John Steinbeck: The Errant Knight�
[Ed. note: This is part eight of an experiment to see if drinking while writing will make me more charming, funnier, and the best dancer in the world. The experiment begins here.]
So what exactly is it that makes a person write a biography? Is it love for the subject or thoughts of something that would sell? This book seems likes it�s a combination of both.
The author, admittedly, only knew Steinbeck in passing. He worked for a newspaper, and first heard about the author through his father who did the typical father thing saying, �hey, my son�s a writer, you ought to profile him.� the reporter shrugged it off, saying he�d get around it when he won the Nobel Prize.
Well, Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize, so he had to keep his end of the bargain.
But was it necessary? Probably not. Anybody who wants to find out about Steinbeck can read Jackson Benson�s extensive biography. Valjean skirts around this by concentrating only on Steinbeck�s early California years.
The plus in his favor is Valjean has a reporter�s ear for quotes, and is willing to hunt down various sources. It�s a good piece, but it smacks of what is wrong with the newspaper game � there�s too much reliance on what�s already been printed.
Which is why I�m so much more proud of my girlfriend. I mentioned a while back about how she worked for my former school paper, and how I was now helping them with copy editing in order for me to qualify to go to the journalism convention at the beginning of this month. It wasn�t so much that I wanted to go, but we�ve spent over three months together, every night, and we still weren�t sick of each other, amazingly enough.
Anyhoo, there was a contest for a bring-in essay. The idea behind this was that you had time to hunt down reliable sources of information. But the subject was so broad and boring: �How has coverage changed for the presidential race and what effect will it have on future elections?�
Well, there�s some obvious examples for this � Nixon�s debate against Kennedy being the most obvious one, where Nixon was believed to be the victor in the debates for those who heard it on radio, but Kennedy blew Nixon away on television, since Nixon looked like the nervous little rat bastard that he was.
But that�s still too broad of a range, and frankly, too out of date. It would be worth noting but there�s more stuff that�s happened now. We were both at a loss on how to include it.
Now I�ve already said my girlfriend is exactly like me, except for the fact that she�s shorter and had a better rack, but watching her work was amazing. She put it off continuously until the night before. The night before we had to leave, she still hadn�t thought of anything.
Eleven o�clock hit, and we decided to watch The Daily Show for inspiration.
And inspired we were. The Daily Show made fun of the kids who asked John Kerry questions on MTV, and we thought about the youth vote. Soon after, we were smoking on the porch, bouncing ideas off each other. At one o�clock in the morning, we had a good skeleton outline on what was needed.
But, as we�re so alike, that didn�t mean she sat down in front of the keyboard. Instead, we watched the April Fool�s Day episodes of Adult Swim, looking for the fake mustaches drawn onto the characters of The Family Guy, Futurama, and some Japanese animation.
Somewhere before two in the morning, she went in the side room to type.
And type she did. The only thing she did different from myself is that she didn�t drink. She finished the piece somewhere around four in the morning, but was then so jazzed up that she couldn�t sleep. When she finally did drift off, the alarm woke us up an hour later. She then drove to L.A., got the rest of the Internet sources plugged in, and turned in her paper.
People take these conventions way too seriously. Every other student from other schools looked suspiciously at everybody to try and size up what kind of threat they posed. They had professional looking press passes that would probably work if they didn�t note that they were from the College of the Sequoias. Everyone was extremely uptight.
We were too tired to take it seriously. The girlfriend and I made fake press passes, hers with a cartoon drawing of herself flashing devil horns with both hands, me flipping people off and holding a bottle of booze. While other people studied their guide to the convention, we did carpet surfing, pulling each other across the hallway at high speed with our feet placed over our room itineraries.
And then the first night of awards came. De Anza wasn�t doing particularly well, scoring a few honorable mentions, until my girlfriend got a second place in opinion story. We left the banquet and went back to the room for much-needed sleep.
The next night was worse. I was requited as a ringer for the school for the copy editing contest. My girlfriend, who is very good ant catching errors, had the opportunity to go to a page design seminar that she couldn�t pass up. Others asked me to go in her stead.
I noted that there was only one problem � I wasn�t a student. They didn�t care.
Walking into the test felt like a rehash of my entrance test for Columbia University. But I felt confident, quickly answering all the Associated Press style guide questions I knew from years of practice. When we got to the section with name recognition, I still did pretty good � better than I did on my test for Columbia, anyway. I walked out with a noicible swagger.
�How�d it go?� my girlfriend asked.
�I think I did pretty good,� I said.
�You think you did pretty well?� she said.
�Okay, so maybe it wasn�t that good.�
But I stuck with my story � I did pretty well. Now it was just a matter of how well everybody else did.
That night they did the second set of awards. When they got to my category and got to the third place award, I knew I wasn�t going to win anything.
I�m a lousy ringer. Sorry.
The awards continued, with her school still not winning anything higher than an honorable mention. Then they hit the award for bring-in essay. The essay has no honorable mention, no fourth through first place awards. There is one winner and one winner only.
And they called her name.
There is only one thing that would have made the night any more perfect, and that would be if she was tarted up in a short skirt with stockings with back seams and garter belts.
Which was exactly what she was wearing.
- Beer consumed: Six and 1/3rd.
- Cigarettes smoked: Twelve.
- Trips to the bathroom: Three.
- Specifics that I actually remember about the book: a fair amount.
