OMG, WE JUST HEARD THE NEWS: Two Performance Artists just won a Bronze Medal for Best Regional Fiction in the 2014 Independent Publisher Book Awards!
The novel is set in San Francisco’s rough Tenderloin neighborhood, which is where I started writing the book in 1999. In the four-block walk between my apartment and Polk Street, I’d pass liquor stores, pan handlers, people of every color, a blowjob in progress, art galleries, a vet in a wheelchair, mom-and-pop restaurants with flies buzzing in the windows, psych ward escapees, a gay salon, the rich, the destitute, software geeks on kick scooters, a gaggle of transvestite prostitutes checking their hair, drug hustlers and drunks…it was beautiful.
The awards ceremony will be held May 28 in NYC just a day before the kickoff of the BookExpo book convention. I can’t wait! Thanks so much to everyone who helped make this little dream come true!
***UPDATE: The ceremony was a blast! Held at NYC’s historic Providence space—it was once a church, then became a lavish recording studio where Sinatra, Hendrix, Streisand and Stevie Wonder all recorded—seeing my name in lights was surreal. There were two floors with views of the stage, but not enough guest tables, so a lot of attendees had to stand around with their plates of food, including the people on the second floor, who thought it was a good idea to balance their plates on the balcony railing. Every few minutes I’d see a cracker or piece of cheese fall onto the head or plate of a guest below. That—and being there with my hilarious & gorgeous wife—were my favorite parts of the night (you can see where my priorities are, I guess—haha). 
June 18th, 2015 at 8:22 am
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May 24th, 2014 at 6:22 pm
Yes,
but this dude didn’t write for an award, he wrote for the fun of it. He was published by a legit but small publishing house. And these publishing houses just don’t have the money to promote anything. This isn’t 1926 when we only had radio and books. HL Menckan promoted the shit out of the great american authors in editorials – back then – and he did it for the money and his authors. He promoted the American Literature that is read today from the 7th through 16th grade – I assure you of that Mr. “On Awards”.
Plus, in 1977, Instead of Books and Radio of the 20′s and 30′s we had film and TV, but film and TV had its golden age back then. Let’s not forget Norman Leer and the great films of the 1970′s. Most of the great films of that decade can’t be beat. In fact, there was terrific mass market writing that became the fodder for movies in the 1970s. And guess what – these films and mass market books were promoted heavily and deservedly so. What would have happened if Mario Puzo didn’t write the book “The God Father” – where would Cuppola, Pacino and even nick cage be if neither the book or the film weren’t promoted. Where would we as readers be if we hadn’t read books like The God Father or Rose Marie’s Baby? (Yes, they were mass market and they weren’t 20′s literature but these guys wrote great prose and they entertained people.) They were promoted based upon the merit of their work and after the fact (after the book was written and after the movie was made and after some pretty damn good gate keepers knew that both the book and the movie was going to be entertaining, a hit, and even be thought provoking).
Today, people don’t read and publishing houses don’t give money or heavily promote books. They promote writers from the 90s when there were still budgets. Major publishers don’t take chances on books written by a guy like Wichman – so smaller houses pick someone like him up and force him to do his own promoting. Yes, they print it but he has to pimp it.
This is the dynamic of the publishing industry these days, especially for small publishing houses who are trying to promote a guy like this Scotch Wichman.
Like Woody Allen Said in his movie “Hollywood Ending” -
Val Waxman: You mean why the country got so stupid suddenly? My theory is it’s the fast foods.”
Basically, guys like Scotch (that’s a weird name) have to do some of the lifting when a smaller publishing house picks him up because they don’t have the budget to do it all. They have the budget to invest in the publication but not the promo. That’s how it is. That’s how it is because people don’t read. They can barely talk. They can barely concentrate on the person they are talking to because they are so ensconsed and focused on the pig latin spew that comes out of their smart phones.
If a dude like Scotch can get any fucking promo that he had no say in, let him have it. Let him get an award. Fuck: don’t get so pedantic, and air tight because a poor but talented writer got an award. We are lucky that guys like him are writing books that don’t take the same structural trajectory of a Patterson or a Grisham. He took a chance on writing a book that had a unique plot. I personally thought his book was somewhat long but I kept reading it because it had a good story line and was thick with good prose.
If a poor but good writer happened to get some award without even writing for one and he is promoting this award because his publisher can’t do it for him I say good, and cut him some slack. He’s a poor shnook like us all who has to pay the fucking rent, and we are lucky that he has the gift to entertain.
Let’s face it: Woody Allen never attempted a book because he knew his true calling was to be a hollywood hack and not a novelist. yes, allen is a good movie maker but he even gets several million dollars from sony to promo his movies – even when half of them go straight to video.
Bottom Line: this award is not the pulitzer and this is not an award that will give him fame, but it is an award that gave recognition to a guy that wrote a damn good story and entertained us with good prose.
Enjoy the book and let him have some cake.
May 24th, 2014 at 5:14 pm
Woody Allen on Awards (A catchy line from the movie Annie Hall)
Alvy Singer: What’s with all these awards? They’re always giving out awards. Best Fascist Dictator: Adolf Hitler.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075686/quotes
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On turning down the Pulitzer – Sinclair Lewis
In 1926, on discovering that his novel, “Arrowsmith,” had been awarded what was then called the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, author Sinclair Lewis wrote the following letter to the Pulitzer Prize Committee and declined the honour. He remains the only person to have done so.
(Source: The Rise of Sinclair Lewis; Image: Sinclair Lewis, via.)
For Release Thursday, May 26th, 1926
To the Pulitzer Prize Committee,
Courtesy of Mr. Frank D. Fackenthal, Secretary,
Columbia University
New York City
Sirs:—
I wish to acknowledge your choice of my novel “Arrowsmith” for the Pulitzer Prize. That prize I must refuse, and my refusal would be meaningless unless I explained the reasons.
All prizes, like all titles, are dangerous. The seekers for prizes tend to labor not for inherent excellence but for alien rewards: they tend to write this, or timorously to avoid writing that, in order to tickle the prejudices of a haphazard committee. And the Pulitzer Prize for novels is peculiarly objectionable because the terms of it have been constantly and grievously misrepresented.
Those terms are that the prize shall be given “for the American novel published during the year which shall best present the wholesome atmosphere of American life, and the highest standard of American manners and manhood.” This phrase, if it means anything whatever, would appear to mean that the appraisal of the novels shall be made not according to their actual literary merit but in obedience to whatever code of Good Form may chance to be popular at the moment.
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/09/all-prizes-like-all-titles-are-dangerous.html