This was the third Halloween I spent in Maplewood, New Jersey, home of Chris, Laura and Sky Martin.  (Maplewood is also the birthplace of the golf tee...see, I'm always good for a little tour.)  Halloween is the one holiday I rarely enjoy in New York, having come home way too often with shaving cream on my coat, so for the last three years, I've taken a train from Penn Station in the late afternoon and headed to the suburbs.  This was the first year I made it to the parade, which takes over the downtown strip.   (The picture below was taken early.)  At the parade, we learned that the Martin house, which won Scariest House last year did not even place this season.  Indignant, Chris ordered us into the car where we drove to investigate the homes of the so-called winners.  One was commendable; another--with a lynching theme--was gruesome, but the third was pathetic and made it clear to us that the Lion's Club, who bestowed the prizes, had made a conscious decision not to give Chris the grand prize every year but to spread it around to other citizens as a means of encouraging others in the community to participate.  The sentiment radiating from the driver's seat was that the scariest house should win Scariest House, plain and simple, and this egregious affront was symptomatic of everything wrong in this country.

During the car ride, Sky (at year one, a purple monster; at year two, a lamb; and now, Superman) told jokes.  Actually, just one, which goes like this:  "Knock-knock."  "Who's there?"  "Boo."  "Boo who?"  "Don't cry, Robert, it's only a joke."

In his version, though, it reads, "Don't cry, Robert, it's always a joke."  Sky found this hiLARious and we ran through that I'd say about fifty times during the course of the evening.

His father, however, would have no part in knock-knock jokes.  We had to get home so that he could put the finishing touches on this year's masterpiece.   Chris prepares for this holiday all year.  He shops for assorted props and set pieces--he's hitting all the 50% sales today as I write this--and builds everything else.  Last summer, he bought a 300-pound witch from a movie theater that was screening The Wizard of Oz and he hires a crane every year to lift her into place.  He uses fog machines, colored lights, a remote-controlled electric chair that loudly rattles when least expected, and live actors dressed as monsters who pretend to be mechanical as the trick-or-treaters slowly approach the house, and then jump and scream, brandishing their meat cleavers.

Middle-school boy from last night:  "If he touches you, you can sue him."

If you're a parent in the neighborhood, you are almost forced to drive by this house nightly for the two weeks leading up to Halloween, the children fascinated with the progress and eager for the holiday.  The youngest ones come early, when it's not too frightening, before it turns dark, before the electric chair and meat cleaver games. 

Last night, the most common refrain uttered by children reaching the porch was:  "Trick or Treat."   But a close second was the declaration: "You have the scariest house in Maplewood."  Still outraged by this year's judging, Chris would answer:  "Tell that to the Lion's Club!" or "Write your congressman!"

All of the candy (750 pieces I think) was handed out, journalists stopped by for pictures, children screamed, a knock-knock joke was repeated again and again, I boarded the train back to the city of smeared Barbasol, and Chris and Laura began their annual debate of when their yard would be restored...Chris in no rush, Laura less patient, booking the crane for Saturday.

Here's a great interview promoting my upcoming trip to Maryland (Nov. 15-20):  Interview.

If you have a myspace page, make sure you add me as a friend...today I'm starting a contest.  The following is posted on my myspace page, which you can find at http://www.myspace.com/robertwestfield.

All right, everyone:  this is my first myspace giveaway.  Future contests will reward Best Mondegreens (those misheard lyrics you’ve been singing wrong for years), Most Creative Photos of a Suspension Reader, and Best Recreation of the "Suspension Leap" from the cover, but this one is simply to help build the network, and so prizes will go to the people who refer the most friends to my page.

And those prizes include:

3 private tours of New York City given by the author.  Winners can redeem these any way they’d like.  Your parents are in town and want to visit the Metropolitan Museum?  I’ll meet them on the steps and take them on a Highlights tour.  You and your friends want to go on a literary pub crawl of Greenwich Village?  I’m your man.  You’re visiting New York for the holidays?  I’ll take you on a specialized tour of Rockefeller Center and Fifth Avenue.  Visiting in the spring?  Let’s walk through Central Park.  Or Wall Street or Harlem or Brooklyn Heights or Flushing Meadows.  You’ve read the book and want to take a Suspension tour?  We’ll start naturally at the Brooklyn Bridge.  Whatever—and wherever—you want.  (Not Staten Island.)  I’d probably encourage you to limit the group to 12 and the length to 2 hours, but we can chat about that.

5 winners may opt for a gift from my publisher:  a Harper Perennial tote bag full of some of their newest books, including Polly by Amy Bryant; Working Stiff, by Grant Stoddard; and Lullabies for Little Criminals, by Heather O'Neill.

1 winner might prefer a package of three of my favorite NY books (all signed by me for no real reason).  Since I have far more than three favorite NY books, you'll be able to select from a list.

And 1 person will receive a very unique copy of Suspension signed not only by me but by writers, actors, singers, editors and all sorts of people who played some part in the inspiration, creation or promotion of the book.  With this prize comes a list of their bios, their role in the process, and some insider trivia about the five whose names appear as characters in the book.  Why settle for one autograph when you can have twenty?

There you go:  10 prizes for 10 winners.

VERY IMPORTANT:  MAKE SURE WHEN YOUR FRIENDS ADD ME AS A FRIEND THAT THEY ALSO SEND A MESSAGE TELLING ME WHO SENT THEM SO THAT I CAN KEEP TRACK AND GIVE YOU CREDIT.

The contest ends at the end of the month and begins................right now!

I leave today for six days in Charles County, Maryland, my home from age nine until eighteen.  I'll be meeting with students at McDonough, La Plata, North Point, Westlake, and Lackey, my alma mater...although I think it's now called "Henry E. Lackey."  I'll be reading, answering questions and signing at the College of Southern Maryland in La Plata at 7:30 on Friday, the 17th as part of their Connections series.  I'll also be appearing for a meet-and-greet at the Brewhouse in La Plata from 12-2 on Saturday.  Finally, on Monday, before my train, I'll be meeting with one of the most important book clubs in the country...my mom's.

November 25, 2006

One of my favorite literary web sites is Susan Henderson's LitPark:  Where Writers Come to Play.  Today I'm particularly fond of it since I'm featured in a conversation with Lance Reynald about Suspension, writerly quirks, and the creation of the modern celebration of Christmas.  This link should take you to the interview.

Deadlines approach and I'm still catching up on paperwork, but a blog about my amazing trip to Maryland is coming soon.

I have a brother named Brian and a friend named Whitney who love nothing more than to google "Robert Westfield" and send me links to what they've found.  I've learned all sorts of things from them.

I'm proud to say that "Robert Westfield" appears linked with Lynda Carter at Wonderland: The Ultimate Wonder Woman Site.  It turns out Lynda Carter starred in a made-for-TV movie for NBC in 1981 called Born to Be Sold based on the book, The Baby Brokers.  Harold Gould played the villain...Robert Westfield.

From the synopsis:  "An ambulance is called and Cindy and her baby are taken to the hospital. Marty Helick calls Robert Westfield, the attorney who is responsible for setting up the "baby broker" business. A slick operator, Westfield arranges for private adoptions with childless couples, charging astronomical amounts of money. He then pays the young girl a small sum, takes care of the bills and makes a tidy profit for himself."

My favorite part is obviously:  "A slick operator, Westfield..."

"Robert Westfield" was also a character chased down by Mulder and Scully in the X-Files apparently.  I was sent that link a while ago but can't find it now.

My biggest shock though...and Brian and Whitney LOVED this one...was to learn that "Robert Westfield" had already published a book!  In 1998!  In Germany!

Aaron Carter - Crazy Little Party Boy Buch

Veröffentlichungsdatum: 1998

Autor: Robert Westfield

Let the record show that Suspension is my debut and that I have yet to write a biography about a nine-year-old.  Crazy or not.

I'm heading off to Yale tomorrow to read at Labyrinth Books on York Street in New Haven at 5:30.  If you're in Connecticut, come by and say hello.  I'll be signing copies of Suspension and Crazy Little Party Boy.

There's an insightful, eloquent review (one of my favorite so far) by Brien Michael at The Quarterly Conversation entitled "The Spectacle of Imagination." 

I was honored to be asked to write an essay for the award-winning blog of Norman Geras in the U.K.  He has a feature in which writers and scholars (an impressive list) write about a favorite book.  I just sent in a 1500-word essay on Notes from the Underground, which along with Crime and Punishment are the two books that most influenced Suspension.  I was happy with the essay yesterday and hope I still am by the time it's posted in the next week.  I guess the best link to find the essay would be:  http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2005/08/writers_choice__2.html . Mine should appear next Tuesday, the day after Christmas.

This is a link that made me laugh this morning.  It's about an Austrian town whose name would be censored or changed here:  F******, Austria.  Because of the British tourists who love bringing the sign home, it has been set in concrete.

The sign In New York most frequently stolen, and as a result is now high above the street and bolted more securely in place than other signs, is Gay Street.  Named after a man, probably Sidney Howard Gay (1814-1888) who was the managing director of the New York Tribune, and has nothing to do with the nearby Stonewall Inn and the 1969 uprising, although most people think it does.

December 21:  the shortest day of the year.  Starting tomorrow the evenings become incrementally lighter.  Whoo-hoo!  These last couple of weeks are among my least favorite of every year as it gets darker and darker and darker.  I'm hardly living in northern Scandinavia--at least I'm eating lunch in daylight--but I'm consistently shocked whenever night falls in December.

My other irritation this time of year is having to listen to people complaining about how Christmas has become all about shopping when shopping and gift-giving is what made Christmas the major holiday that it's become.  There was a reason that many religious people, including our own Puritans in New England, outlawed the holiday--because it was a sham (according to the Bible, Jesus couldn't have been born in December) laid clumsily over an ancient Roman holiday.  Consumerism and the modern traditions of Christmas were invented at the same time in the early nineteenth century and owe their existence to one another.  Technically, if there's a time of year when consumerism should come to the fore, it's Christmas.  (Disclaimer:  complaining about Christmas decorations in October and early November is perfectly legitimate.)

I wrote about this last month in an interview with Lance Reynald at Litpark.com.  Here's an excerpt of that interview:

"In time for the holidays, here’s one of my favorites and explains why images of “Old Christmas” are almost exclusively Victorian. (Credit for this goes to Stephen Nissenbaum’s The Battle for Christmas, which is a profound cultural history of the holiday and not related to the silly and shallow War on Christmas books.) Before the 1820’s, Christmas was a completely different holiday. The roots go back to the ancient Roman celebration of Saturnalia, a harvest holiday when Saturn was released, chaos reigned, the streets were full of bacchanalian revelry, and masters and servants would switch places for the duration. This served as a social gauge and was understandably popular with the servants.

Hundreds of years later, a monk placed the birth of Christ atop this pagan tradition in an attempt to smother it. Religious leaders were riled, asking what shepherds would be tending their flock by night in Syria in late December? When the Puritans came to New England, the holiday was outlawed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The way the holiday was celebrated for centuries was with marauding members of the lower class knocking on the doors of the wealthy, caroling or wasailing in order to be invited inside to partake of the best wine and food the house had to offer. Think trick-or-treating. In the rapidly growing city of New York, there was a move to alter this tradition.

The Knickerbockers, a wealthy social set with literary interests, which included Washington Irving (America’s first full-time writer and the man whose fabricated history of New York introduced the fictitious Knickerbocker family and the name “Gotham,” a man so respected that one bank printed his face on currency to attract investors and a developer named a street after him to lure residents to the newly laid out Gramercy Park), decided to celebrate the holiday the way their Dutch forebears did. Of course, it was all phony. The Dutch did have a St. Nicholas Day in the beginning of December (or at least the Catholic Dutch back in Holland did), but the New Yorkers pulled in several disparate harvest traditions and invented others. A poem was crafted—A Visit from St. Nicholas—the patron saint of New Amsterdam (the Dutch name for NYC).

Whether Clement Clarke Moore penned it or someone else as was recently claimed, it was a radical poem that cast Santa as a worker (he smokes a short pipe...everyone at the time knew that only workers smoked short pipes—they broke off the stems to fit them in their pockets while the wealthy left their pipes hanging on the tavern walls). In the poem, Santa (the worker) is someone who leaves gifts instead of guzzling your wine and is someone who comes down the chimney allowing you leave your front door firmly closed to the street. But what’s most radical is the idea that instead of masters switching places with servants, the children switch places with their parents. So these writers, mainly in Greenwich Village and the area now known as Chelsea, are responsible for turning this raucous street holiday based on class into a cozy domestic one centered around the family. And with it comes the birth of consumerism—the first goods in the history of manufacturing to be given away by the purchaser were Christmas gift books; the cult of the child; and the countless traditions we now consider centuries old."

This fall I was asked by Norman Geras to write about a favorite book for his Writer's Choice series at his award-winning Web site.  I chose to write about Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground, a primary inspiration for Suspension.  It was an interesting experience revisiting the book and though the essay was supposed to be 750 words, it quickly ballooned to over 3000.  I cut it down to 1500, which was twice the length requested but half the length drafted.  You can read the essay here:  Writer's Choice 82.

All right, all right. I'm back.  I'm blogging again.  It's been a very busy couple of weeks and most of my time has been spent preparing to launch something on this Web site which will make it a more dynamic site to visit once or twice a week.  I'll announce it soon, but I can say that I've been researching and scripting for the last month and that we began shooting on Thursday.  Thursday, by the way, was the second real day of winter, and we were shooting outside, so...I've been thawing out for the last few days.  We were supposed to shoot today as well but the rain is keeping us all home.  Good. 

So let's see.  First off, I've added some links about New York to the links page and will reproduce them right here for easy access:

Three lessons I've learned so far in 2007:

1--If you happen to be shooting video in New York and you have a wireless mike attached to your scarf, which is tied beneath your chin, you do not, do NOT, have to shout all the way to the camera. 

2--It's still wise to research your movies.  If you're planning to see Pan's Labyrinth, which I recommend, be prepared!!!!  If you're going to Pan's Labyrinth based on the original trailer, which seemed fanciful and beautiful and probably sweet, you will be surprised.  My friend, Nona, and I decided to see the movie the day it came out.  We were both extremely stressed and we wanted to escape into another world, full of imagination and pretty music.  We met at Ollie's, had a beer and some soup, chatted about the holidays and strolled over to the theater/Chamber of Horrors.  The first sign of trouble was the selection of trailers...all scary, all gory, all very loud.  Nona turned to me and whispered, "I don't think our movie is what we think it is." 

And it wasn't.  Isn't.  People's faces are bashed in with bottles, people are shot repeatedly at close range, cheeks are slashed open and then stitched up in graphic detail, people bleed from their noses, from their vaginas, others are tortured, hands are mutilated....And this all alternates with the "imaginary world," which is not at all an escape, it's an even more terrifying place where fairies are chewed to death, monsters scream, a giant toad explodes.  Back to that preview by the way:  that fabulous creature with his eyes in the palms of his hands is not, IS NOT, a fun sidekick, is not, IS NOT, comic relief; he is a creepy demon who will haunt your dreams.  I knew he was going to turn out to be evil as soon as I saw him, and I almost screamed at the screen:  "Don't eat the grapes, you stupid, stupid girl!!!!"

All I'm saying is this:  if you're going to the movies to unwind, because you're really tense, this is not the film for you.  Neither are Notes on a Scandal, Children of Men, The Departed or Blood Diamond...all good films but not cinema serenite.

3--If you're going to a Pedro Almodovar movie, (e.g., Volver, one of my favorites of 2006) you must arrive early, even if it's in the middle of the afternoon.  Otherwise, you're way up front, too close to the screen, and can't read the subtitles, because you're too distracted taking in all of his amazing shots, too enamored with how he's framing the scenes that you miss all the information (and there's a lot of it) at the beginning and so you spend most of the movie wondering "who's that," "who died," "where's the aunt," "are they related?"  (You can arrive any time you want if you speak Spanish.) 

Happy New Year!!!!

Twelve days later.  So at the moment I'm not the most faithful of bloggers.  What can I say?  I'm telling you this project is consuming much more time than I anticipated. 

Thought I'd share with you one of the funniest (actually more terrifying) clips I've been sent recently.  This is a bride meltdown so extreme that you're forced to wonder what you would do if you had to calm a similar bride.  These women keep trying to get her to drink champagne...I think I would use the bottle to knock her out.  You might think that sounds harsh, but you watch this and suggest another alternative.

I also found a handy little link for hypothetical taxi rides:  nyccabfare.com  

One week later...that bride episode was a hoax.  Toronto Star.  Which does make sense--this woman is coming back from a hairdresser one hour before her wedding? 

Almost two weeks later.  By this point, some of you might be thinking that this is a pretty lame and infrequent blog, but I'll let you in on a secret:  I've spent this winter preparing to add a page to this site and this preparation has included researching, writing, casting, producing, and acting in short films--tours of New York--which we'll start posting here in the next week or two...at the latest, by my birthday on the 26th.  Once this is up and running, we'll be posting a segment once a week with a follow-up blog a few days later.  The idea was originally to post two video segments a week, but that idea was deranged.

As much as I looked forward to this project, I was taken aback on January 11th, when the camera began rolling...or whatever digital cameras do.  Whose idea was this?  What in the world am I doing?  Here I was, freezing on 43rd Street with several friends behind a camera, one actually holding a reflector beneath me which I found almost as distracting as I did the pedestrians gawking and asking themselves "Who the hell is that?" while I myself asked Cayce, my videographer, "Um, does the camera have to be on?"  Cayce replied, "Yes, if you want to record."  "Hm.  I guess I do."

On the first day we were able to shoot four segments, or fifteen pages.

The next weekend we were rained out and the weekend after that we were chilled out and the weekend after that a group of us gathered in Central Park, wearing eight layers each and defying winter with every last breath.  My lips don't chap (that's information in case you were thinking of sending me lip balm for my birthday); however, shooting three days in this arctic winter of ours has required half a tube of Blistex.

On this second day, we were able to shoot four segments, or fifteen pages. 

Then this past Sunday, failing to observe that 15 pages took from 8:30-4:30, I arrived Wall Street with a 36-page script that I'd finished the night before and wondering when I was going to memorize some of the longer bits, all the while holding a plastic bag full of 48 oyster shells and another bag with tomato, eggplant, endive, and asparagus.  Needless to say, we were unable to complete the script by nightfall.  (One advantage to writing a novel is that you rarely have to worry about the duration of sunlight.)  Over drinks afterwards, however, I realized that, amazingly, we had shot several full segments.

How many pages?  15.  Note to self:  15 seems to be the limit.

So we return to Wall in March and in the meantime, we edit and begin posting these segments for you...by the 26th at the latest.   Stay tuned.

*****************

Another thing I've been up to this winter is a ventriloquist act I began in December.  I've found that it's much easier to use a small child instead of a puppet...though this one is getting a bit heavy.

ROBERT:  Say "See you in the next blog, Mr. Marillagoo!"

MR. MARILLAGOO:  I'm not going back in that suitcase without a juice box!