Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Sweetness

Did you ever open up a package, confident of the contents, only to be stunned?

I mean really, really, jaw-droppingly, life-in-slow-motioned stunned?

My MacBook Pro has eaten another battery so I ordered a new one of uncertain Asian origin on eBay last week. I arrived home tonight to find one of those oversized postal envelopes hanging out of the mailbox, which is a sure sign I'd be able to untether my Mac from an extension cord for more than 10 minutes by nightfall.

I threw the mailer with its brick-like contents onto my chair as I set to my nightly coming home ritual: free the cats from their holding pen (alas, construction continues), pick out tomorrow's wardrobe, change into shorts, arrange vitamins for the evening/morning doses, fill a giant glass with ice water, provide Sammy and Pal Joey treats to compensate for Mary not freeing them during her between-jobs break and then get to the mail.

Opening the mailer, I was, for lack of a better word (hence it's third use), stunned.

It was a copy of "Sweetness," the controversial, new Jeff Pearlman book about Walter Payton.



Now, I had just ordered a copy for my iPad, though I haven't gotten to it yet as I am engrossed in the new Christopher Hitchens collection, "Arguably."

My first thought: Did Amazon screw up somehow?

The return address, however, was revealing: It was from Jeff Pearlman!

I'd been found...

Now, when the book came out, Pearlman authored a blog that, frankly, I did not take kindly to. It was titled, "The Truth," and it was a plea, or as I called it, a "pity party" that fans read the entire book before judging it's merit. Most fans, me included, had only read the salacious details (drug addiction, depression, affairs, etc.) contained either in the Sports Illustrated cover story or in even more brief wire accounts of the Sports Illustrated story.

Pearlman wrote in part:

"I don’t care how you read Sweetness, but if you’re someone screaming and yelling, “How dare you! How dare you!” I encourage you to take in 460 pages, not seven. Go through the Columbia, Mississippi years; the Jackson State years; the down days in Chicago, when the Bears were a joke and Walter Payton was the only beacon of hope. If, after you’ve done that, you still think the book was a hit job, call me."


I pounded Pearlman in Twitter and in comments on his blog (which I signed). The argument that I posted:

"Uhm, the points in total are understood BUT Sports Illustrated obviously did not, either, choose to republish the entirety of the 460 pages. So, the most salacious accounts are republished, instead. Does THAT paint a full, fair picture of the entirety of the book? No. Hence your pity party here is, at best, odd. You accept the juicy morsels being spewed out there to juice the sale of your book, then cry that fans are not judging the entirety of your work. It seems to me that when bits and pieces are chosen that benefit your book’s sales, you are totally on board. Hmmm…"

After that, I moved on, but not before I Tweeted that I would probably read the book, which I bought last week, downloaded to my iPad and was next on my reading agenda.

Which brings us to today and this envelope with a book and a note…

Essentially, Jeff Pearlman tracked me down, found my blog and is probably penning my bio as I type this. I made that very last part up, but he did enjoy my blog and apparently read quite a lot of it. He even gave a shout-out to Pal Joey.

He then wrote, "Clearly, you don't like my reason or the idea of the Payton biography. However, I'm including a copy with the hope you at least read the first few chapters and see where I was heading."

He ended with a funny P.S.: "Feel free to keep ripping me. It's certainly NOT against the rules."

It was a very classy gesture, except that he also inscribed the book and now I can't re-gift it to my brother for Christmas and now I am stuck with two copies.

Just kidding: My struggle with classiness continues, as you can see.

I think, however, he misunderstood my original stance. I am not so much opposed to the idea of the Payton biography. I was opposed to the author/publisher/SI scheme to reduce it all to a series of agonizing bytes that inflicted pain on Walter's legacy, his family and his fans.

I cried the day Walter died. I own one of the last balls he ever signed which was a Christmas gift from my wife (and the fifth autograph of his added to my collection). Since he was a human, I presumed he had imperfect human qualities. However, nothing could or will ever impact my admiration for the man and his abilities and they way he faced life on and off of the field.

So, my feelings for Walter are very personal. And as I watched the digesting of the most salacious biography morsels and saw them spewed into the Internet and onto the airwaves to become fodder for those who did not love Walter, I took it very personally.

I've struggled for a way to convey this honestly in a way that might make some sense. This is the best I could come up with: Jeff, you know that wacky story that could be on the news tomorrow about the forgetful elderly lady who accidentally hits the gas instead of the breaks on her Buick speeding it into the doughnut shop, killing herself and crushing the cop? Well, as wacky as that might play on the cable news shows and on the Internet, there's still the reality that that woman was a mother and grandmother. And she had children and grandchildren. And her family loved her and as ironic and goofy a way that her life ended, that amounts to 1/100,000,000,000,000,000th of the life she lived on this planet. So what might seem like wacky fodder for many will be viewed very differently and very personally by those who actually knew her and loved her.

And that view will not be the view of the dispassionate journalist.

On top of that, I have grown very weary of biographies in general. Want me to sum up all biographies? Here: The person was born. He/she had unusual traits. Something remarkable happened. Here's what really happened as told after the fact. Maybe something remarkable happened again. Was it really remarkable? Then something bad happened. He/she had unusual habits. Here's what some people thought about those habits after the fact. The fall from grace continues augmented by revelations of those habits/traits. Now comes perseverance. Redemption! Then the person dies. Some people feel bad about the death. Is there a lesson here? The end.

We all, every one of us, has a habit or trait or personal affliction that any number of other people will find unusual - or at least claim they find unusual so that they can also claim to be more "normal" which is a state of existence that does not exist. I find those traits that we have in common are far more important that any differences we have as are share in this human condition. But there are lots of differences and some people can seize upon them for all sorts of agendas.

That said, I am stunned (four times!) by your kindness and generosity, Jeff. And so, writer-to-writer, I wanted to share this space to tell this story. As intended, I will read your book. And I will honestly review "Sweetness" in this space.

More later,

Mark

P.S. If I outlive Pearlman, I am writing his biography. I called dibs ...
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