“Learning not to dislike Hemingway.”

That was the title an editor gave to a piece in today’s LA Times by book critic David Ulin. (Here it is; points go to the print edition’s copy editor — online it’s tagged “Under the influence of Hemingway,” a headline so weak that it seems a subtle jab at Hemingway’s manly writing style.) I read this piece with great interest because I’ve always read all of Hemingway with great interest since first coming across his short stories in high school, when one of those stories taught me the word “milt,” as Nick Adams strips clean a fish he’s caught. Almost 35 years later, this word has stayed with me. Indeed, I used it in my play “He Said She Said,” written two years ago and produced in LA and, recently, Omaha at the Great Plains Theatre Conference. The play concerns a vacationing PTA mom reading bad erotic poetry she’s written, and that setup flashed me back to the oddly sensual description of Nick Adams cleaning that fish. Here’s the comically bad poem from my play:

                        AMANDA

This is called Deep Sea Diving. Except the “Sea” is spelled “s-e-e.”

Deep see diving.

I can see you down here with me.

The shellfish scuttle out of the way

Forming a cloud of ocean dust around you.

There you are.

Don’t hide.

I can see you.

Peering at me from beneath your coral

Thinking that you’re safe and protected

I reach for you and pull you out

And take you above and slit you open

And run my tongue down the length

Of your milty flesh

Careful not to get your bones

Stuck in my throat.

Hemingway finds the right sensual word — “milt,” the sperm-containing secretion of the testes of fishes — and then in my play Amanda adulterates it into “milty.” Even as a teenage writer, I could see that Hemingway had the knack of finding the right word, something I struggled then and now with.

I picked up other tricks from Hemingway, purposely or accidentally. Here Ulin quotes Hemingway in “Death in the Afternoon”: “If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things strongly as though the writer had stated them.” Note the circular reductionism, as Hemingway returns again and again to the baseline words:  writer/writing; about; enough. There’s a rhythm to this that just pulls you into it; it’s practically Biblical. This element of style infected my writing early on, and that’s fine; I got it from Hemingway, and Hemingway got it from Gertrude Stein, just as Shakespeare got Troilus and Cressida from Chaucer, and Chaucer got it from Boccaccio. All of which means that whether or not I admire Hemingway’s work (and I do), I certainly have been influenced by it.

(Who else was I influenced by? My friend Joe Stafford likes to point out that many of my plays contain what Joe calls “a laundry list” monologue in which someone complains about a host of items or events. In retrospect, the inspiration for this is obvious:  Harold Pinter,  and The Caretaker specifically.)

So here I am, filled with admiration for Hemingway, and somewhat put out by the Times’ book critic writing a piece bearing the headline “Learning not to dislike Hemingway.” To add insult to injury, Ulin goes on to say:

“The one who most spoke to me was Faulkner, with his flowing sea of language, his sense of of the past, of history, as a living thing. Next to him, Hemingway seemed flat, two-dimensional.”

Oh, William Faulkner. You  mean the famous writer I cannot read. The irony here is that, much as Ulin doesn’t care for Hemingway, I can’t abide Faulkner at all. Ever since I posted Doug’s Reading List six years ago, I’ve received many emails and personal comments that the entire list should be held suspect because Faulkner isn’t on it. But I can’t imagine a reason to put him on; I remain unclear what his impact is (on writers in general, or certainly on me). And oh, I have tried reading him, most notably Absalom, Absalom! (three attempts) and, just recently, Light in August again, this time getting to page 152 before bailing out. Here’s an excerpt prototypical paragraph:

He was standing still now, breathing quite hard, glaring this way and that. About him the cabins were shaped blackly out of blackness by the faint, sultry glow of kerosene lamps. On all sides, even within him, the bodiless fecundmellow voices of Negro women murmured. It was as though he and all other manshaped life about him had been returned to the lightless hot wet primogenitive Female….

What are “fecundmellow” voices? Like “milt,” the word aims to be erotic, but Faulkner’s neologism subtracts more than it adds, as do “manshaped” and “primogenitive.” To Ulin, Hemingway may seem “flat” by comparison, but I would respond that he doesn’t yank you out of the milieu with awkward showiness.

While I disagree with the Times’ book critic, I respect him for coming out with his opinion about Hemingway. I’ve been out about my dislike for Faulkner for six years, and I’ve suffered the slings and arrows of lit-snob derision — and I’m not the book critic of a major newspaper. I’m sure Ulin is in for a pasting from readers (and I’m betting he’ll be delighted to get a reminder that people are reading him). Ulin notes Hemingway’s influence — on Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson, Russell Banks, Tobias Wolff, Albert Camus, Norman Mailer, and Hunter S. Thompson (I would add Charles Bukowski) — but he doesn’t care for what Faulkner would call the primogenitive Writer.

All of this reminds me of something that happened last night, after the latest round of readings from my “Words That Speak” playwriting workshop. A couple of weeks ago, some of us in the workshop had plays performed in Moving Arts’ “The Car Plays,” and another playwright and I spent a few minutes last night discussing some of the plays we’d seen (of 26 different car plays, I’d seen 10). We came to the subject of one that neither of us particularly liked;  “It just doesn’t go anywhere,” I said, and my friend agreed. Then he said, “But I saw some people come out of that car wiping tears away.” We think it’s a bad play; others were emotionally swept away; and neither one of us could figure it out.  Just as I still can’t figure out the appeal of William Faulkner.

Speaking of people who “in the cosmic scheme of things have no problems,” I submit the current “debate” generated by Tony Kushner, the everything-award-winning playwright of “Angels in America” and many other globally produced plays, including “Caroline, or Change,” “A Bright Room Called Day,” “Homebody/Kabul,” “Slavs” and “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with the Key to the Scriptures,” which is currently playing off-Broadway. Evidently in a recent interview, Kushner said in passing that “I don’t think I can support myself as a playwright at this point. I don’t think anyone can.” Which ignited this controversy.

While I know that they are rarer than a royal flush, I have met some wealthy playwrights, including Stephen Sondheim and Edward Albee, and got to know one of them somewhat well, Jerome Lawrence. Jerry and his writing partner Robert E. Lee were responsible for “The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail,” “Auntie Mame” (which led to their further hit adaptation, “Mame”), and “Inherit the Wind.” Each of these was wildly commercially successful. From its premiere in 1955 until at least the early 1990s, there wasn’t a day that “Inherit the Wind” wasn’t in production somewhere in the world. Judging from his house alone, which Jerry had built on a bluff with a three-quarter view of the Pacific Ocean, the UPS man was arriving every day with boxes of more cash.

Granted, times have changed. But on the face of it, the idea that Tony Kushner can’t support himself as a playwright is ludicrous. His plays are in constant production around the world, his lecture fees are noteworthy, and I imagine he’s received any number of awards, fellowships, scholarships, and distinctions, that come with monetary rewards. (Note that I’m leaving out his screenwriting career.)

Kushner’s complaint strikes me the way movie stars do when they say about a pet project, “I did it for nothing.” What they mean is: They did it for scale (which every actor I know would be delighted to get), and for back end (which almost no actor I know gets). Jerry Lawrence was a playwright, not truly a screenwriter (although he had credits there as well), and made millions upon millions from his plays. Given all the productions “Angels in America” alone had, including the current one, plus all the productions from his other plays, plus print royalties, plus lecture fees (which are part of being a playwright), I find it hard to believe he can’t make a living. Perhaps what he means is that he can’t make the living he’d like to; that’s a different matter, and to that I’d note that I’ve yet to meet anyone, from my low-wage theatre friends to the two billionaires I’ve met, who felt they should have less.

After I posted this sentiment online, someone else weighed in with something even more to the point: “He can’t make a living as a playwright and he’s surprised? This is a joke, right? I once helped Tony Kushner move a daybed that he bought in Austria for $10k. I wouldn’t lose any sleep over his checking account or how he manages to pay his bills.”

Exactly right.

I haven’t posted on here in so long that for a moment I was afraid I’d forgotten the login.

Not sure why I’ve been absent. I last posted just before leaving for the Great Plains Theatre Conference, and I guess 10 days of constant talking and writing left me talked-out or something. At the same time, I’ve been stockpiling some things I did want to post here, so expect more frequency going forward.

While in Omaha, I led two playwriting workshops; served as a panelist on I think six plays; attended evening play performances; attended rehearsals and tech for my play, as well as the performance; and participated in the requisite bouts of drinking and cigar smoking.  I also petted a friend’s pet piglet (and here’s that photo):

I know — it’s difficult to see. That’s because my friend Max Sparber decided to get arty with the photo.  I guess that with photography, arty means you can’t see what’s in the photo.

With all that walking around teaching and talking, you’re bound to say a few things over the course of 10 days. I’m pretty sure that in one of my workshops, “Starting at the Start,” I advised people to stop worrying about it and just write. I’m pretty sure I said that because I always say that, and for two reasons:  1) whining and complaining drive me crazy and I’m especially tired of hearing it from people who in the cosmic scheme of things have no problems; and 2) it’s unproductive. Whereas freeing yourself to just write, and edit later, often leads you somewhere good. Perhaps I stressed this philosophy of mine even more than usual, because here’s the quote I later saw posted on the conference whiteboard:

In case you can’t quite see that, it say, “Agony doesn’t work. Lee Wochner.” So I got quoted. At first I wasn’t sure what to make of this, but then I figured that since I evidently said it, I must agree with it. I thank the anonymous person who posted it, and wonder if it was intended as further inspiration to others, a reminder to himself, or a combination of both.  Or, since the message stayed posted for the remaining eight days of the conference, maybe no one bothered to notice.

Courtesy of the conference photographer, here’s a photo of me in my official duties as a panelist, giving post-show feedback to a playwright. Note again the arty photography that inhibits seeing what’s in the photo.

A playwright in my workshop in LA saw this on Facebook and said I looked “very Citizen Kane-y.”

And evidently I said this, which I saw on Facebook because the playwright tagged me:  “Do what you want to do. You can have all your careers. Just make sure they’re all creative. – Lee Wochner.”

Yes, I remember saying this, and I think it was on the first bottle of wine. This was probably part of my discourse that we should “plan to live to age 120,” built around a speech I attended last year given by an osteopath, the gist of which was that because we can successfully replace more and more body parts, we should all make plans to be here a lot longer. (This did indeed go into my planning: I’m trying to get rid of things at an even greater pace, now that I understand just how long they’re going to be weighing me down.) Mostly, though, I was inveighing against pigeonholing; this young woman was concerned that people were trying to fit her into a specific box. Barring that mythic bus that may strike each of us out of the blue at any moment, we’ve all got plenty of time and options.

I left the conference on Sunday, and have been in southern New Jersey staying with my mother and family since then, at a low bubble in the local heat, humidity, and troublesome flying insects. More to come about the conference and other things soon. Right now I’m hearing myself say that it’s time to go back outside.

I’m extremely scheduled. It is not my favorite aspect of my life. But when people ask me how I manage to get so much done, I have an answer:  I’m scheduled.

Last week I promised someone that while I was in the area on Saturday, I’d stop by her new coffee bar to sample the coffee. Which I did. Because I put it into my schedule, and my iPhone reminded me.

How do I remember to pick up my 8-year-old from school? It’s in my schedule. (And woe to me — and the kid — if I ever lose the phone. I hope he’ll have enough snacks for overnight.) Haircut? Concert? My wife’s work schedule? Even something as simple as “Get up”? They’re all in my schedule. As I said, I’m not proud of this.

Here’s what’s not in my schedule:  my memory. Because  tonight at five minutes before 7 p.m., there was a ring at my door and I greeted the nice theatre people outside this way:  “I thought we said 7:30.” And yes, I felt pretty crummy the moment I blurted that out. At the very least, I could have said hello first. To make it worse, it was correct in my schedule (and wrong in my brain), because there it was in my schedule that tonight’s rehearsal was set to start at 7 — and it’s Wednesday night’s rehearsal, for a different play of mine, that was scheduled to start at 7:30.

So now I have to put something new in my schedule:  “Remember to read schedule before making ass of yourself.”

Two or three times a year, I get called upon to judge theatre competitions of varying sorts. This year, I’m one of the readers for the PEN USA literary awards, which is always an honor. And this Saturday evening, I’m a judge of this playwriting and performance event at the Secret Rose Theatre. It sounds like a lot of fun. If you’re around, stop by.

I have mixed feelings about contests, awards, and prizes. In grad school, one of my playwriting professors, Jerome Lawrence,  told me he was against writing contests because it pitted writers against writers. I understood his point of view (and that’s an indication of just what sort of a guy Jerry was:  generous beyond measure), especially as someone who at that time had already been on both sides of prize-winning — winning one when I wasn’t sure my play was the best, and losing the same contest the next year when I was sure mine was. Especially when there’s a performance element in judging  a playwriting contest, a lot rides on elements outside the playwright’s control:  How responsive was the audience on the judging night, how “on” were the performers, was it too cold or too hot in the theatre, how was traffic on the way there, was the box office friendly or surly, and so forth.

At the same time, believe me when I say I understand the marketing value of winning any contest or award (and, sometimes, the prize value). I don’t care which movies have won which awards, believe me (especially when  it’s a system that awards “Best Picture” to “Avatar”). But do awards build careers, and would I put the full thrust of marketing and PR behind any awards won? You bet.

There is a story — and I don’t know how reliable it is — that, 40 years ago, the Nobel committee was deadlocked between giving the award for literature to either Samuel Beckett or Eugene Ionesco. Finally, after much deliberation, one of the Ionesco champions who felt that Ionesco’s work had a broader scope than Beckett’s (and there may be something to that), switched sides to end the deadlock. And so:  Samuel Beckett won the Nobel, and Eugene Ionesco never did. Is the work of Beckett, the Nobel-prize-winning writer, better than that of Ionesco? Beckett has become far more deeply rooted in the cultural consciousness — referenced in “The Simpsons,” name-checked on “Quantum Leap,” parodied on Sesame Street — and a lot of that came from winning the Nobel.

As I tell my daughter: Don’t, like, add qualifiers like, um, like, and don’t end declarative sentences with question marks?

Here’s a brief commercial for the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, coming to USC the last weekend of this month. (I will be in Sacramento and unable to attend.)

Watching this spot, it isn’t hard to understand why some people will never grant that LA is a literary town. Because here are the authors promoted in the video: Ted Danson, Rainn Wilson and Patti Smith. I guess Snookie is doing a reading at Harvard that day.

As I’ve written here before, digital technology and the internet allow me to do pretty much everything I wanted to do when I was kid but couldn’t because I didn’t have access to people or tools, and couldn’t afford it. But now I’ve got potentially full access — everyone does — through the internet. It’s allowed me to make some very interesting connections — to the founder of Cosmic Encounter (a game I bought at a science fiction convention when I was 14, and which the next generation of Wochners now plays as well), who once commented on this blog; to writers like Christopher Priest and Mike Daisey (who’ve also commented here); and to people whose work I admire and follow, like David Thomas of Pere Ubu. My latest interesting connection:  I just got an email from a PhD candidate in Egypt who is doing her dissertation on American drama;  she found my website and blog and wanted to know my thoughts about playwriting. I’ve made theatre friends in England and Iceland and Turkey and even New Jersey through the internet. It’s a thrill to add Egypt.

I was saddened but not surprised to learn of the death of playwright Lanford Wilson. I knew through Marshall Mason that Wilson had been failing. Wilson was a Pulitzer Prize-winner, a founder of one of our most important theatres (Circle Rep), and a writer noted around the world — but somehow, his death didn’t make the home page of the Los Angeles Times website. A sad statement indeed.

The first play ever that I bought a ticket for was Wilson’s “Fifth of July,” in 1980 (directed by Marshall). It continues to serve as an inspiration — I’ve bought hundreds and hundreds of theatre tickets since then. In an odd way, though, that wasn’t my introduction to Lanford Wilson’s work; in 1975, Norman Lear adapted a sitcom from Wilson’s play “Hot L Baltimore.” The show concerned prostitutes, a gay couple, an illegal immigrant, and every other sort of inner-city urban entanglement in a cheap hotel, a milieu utterly foreign to my backwoods semi-suburban middle-class youth. The show came with a mature-audiences warning at the beginning, which guaranteed that my 13-year-old self was going to watch it.

The playwright leaves us on the eve of opening night of two revivals of his work:  Steppenwolf is preparing to open “Hot L Baltimore” in Chicago, and “Burn This” is running right now at the Mark Taper Forum here in Los Angeles. A friend invited me for April 1st; I can’t make that date, but I’ll see it another night while it’s here. If you’re not in Chicago or LA, don’t fret; Lanford Wilson’s plays are always playing somewhere, and they always will.

I just came across this new video about Moving Arts, the theatre company I co-founded in 1992. You know you’ve built something successful when now you find out by accident about marketing initiatives like this, when you’re even name-checked in the video, and you had no idea about it previously. (In other words: They don’t need me any more. Sniff sniff.)

By the way, I saw the one-act festival mentioned herein last week and there’s some terrific work in it. I’m sure that at some point I’ll be stealing that set-design concept, which ingenuously unifies the five plays. Here’s where to get tickets.