August 9, 2017

Cool morning. Turned down (by my count for the 26th time) for a state arts grant. Two girls from downstate got them . I can hear the conversation now: “Isn’t it time for some women’s voices?” That are bad, that we will never hear from again, but at least it’s better than giving one to him.

Letter from Daniel Rakov saying that The Great Comet, which gave every indication of running forever, will close before Labor Day, torpedoed by the controversy surrounding the naming of Mandy Patinkin to play Pierre. Patinkin did something to irritate someone, I forget what, and now the producers think that the controversy will not allow them to fill key cast openings. The letter reads a little like strategy to terrify troublemakers into line, but if it tells the truth, and unless things work in ways I don’t anticipate, what I thought would be a financial triumph for me will leave me with a loss of 3/4 of my investment. On a hit show, for a while the biggest on Broadway. It could be that I don’t understand the financial process and that everything will be well. Generally the universe makes me pay for each hopeful anticipation.

Will probably finish Nimmo’s Quay today, based on notes I took for two concluding scenes while in the Racquet Club café. Each time a little bell of joy goes off at a really good line or a really profound shade of meaning, I remind myself that quality has been, by and large, irrelevant to my career as a writer, and perhaps to the art of literature as now practiced in America. Having done the best work means practically nothing. The odd thing is that when I gather the courage to say this publicly, people nod as if to say everybody but me knew this all along.