Can a Columnist and His Readers See I to I?

Nearly two years ago, my first column appeared in this newspaper. It was about bodysurfing at 15th Street in Newport, and it was hard to write because I’d never done a column before. I was a little worried that bodysurfing might not be of interest to many readers, oddball sport that it is.

I was even more worried that readers wouldn’t care one bit about my opinions, experiences or thoughts about bodysurfing--or anything else, for that matter. This is a doubt that I still carry to my typewriter each week as I begin a new piece.

The column began as an experiment, both for The Times and for me. They were curious to see if a crime writer might dismount from his violent novels long enough to apply his eye to daily life in Orange County. I was curious to see what that other part of me might be thinking--the part not lost to the complexities of plot, the exploration of fictional characters, the often grueling three-year marathon of putting together a novel.

After 72 essays, certain patterns have emerged. I’ve kept all the pieces in a stack on my desk, piled up from Oct. 1, 1992, through Sept. 8, 1994, as sophisticated a filing system as I’ve been able to devise.

The stack is about three inches high, depending on how hard you grab it. The bottom pages are yellowed from the afternoon sun that floods this room; the upper ones are still the off-white of fresh newsprint. It’s a curious feeling to be able to hold roughly two years of work in one hand and have it weigh about as much as a pair of tennis shoes.

Reading through this material, I reflected on what I thought I’d been trying to do in this space. My primary mandate from The Times was to write what was described as an “action” column. This, the editors explained, didn’t necessarily mean that I’d go out and do quirky things like bungie-jump or fly with the Blue Angels every week, but rather that I would base each column around a “go and do” format. What I went and did was up to me: It could be as simple as sitting in a pub and watching the world go by, so long as it was something that readers in Orange County might be interested in.

No writer could have gotten a more tempting proposition.

What The Times was offering me was a blank newspaper page to fill thrice monthly with columns about things I would go and do.

What a cakewalk!

I remember sitting in a restaurant, hearing this job description from some of the editors, wondering if I’d forgotten to swab my ears recently. In my original enthusiasm I neglected to consider that I’d written a total of zero columns in my career. Even while I sat there outwardly grousing about pay, office time required and editorial control (they weren’t going to get this writer without a fight!) inwardly I was scrolling through the dozens of really bitchin’ things I could go do and write about.

At the same time, I was inwardly deciding what I would not write about.

I wasn’t willing to write topical pieces, because I have so little grasp of politics, events, trends. The Times already had people doing this far better than I ever could. And I didn’t want to write something that would only hold water briefly, while its subject was hot. I’d covered the news for five years as a very young man and had had enough of that.

Similarly, I decided not to write about other people. This precept was not born of the staggering egotism it might suggest, but from the somewhat humbler notion that the press was already chock-full of profiles, slice-of-life pieces and personality sketches far better than I could produce.

I thought of Pete Hammil, Bob Green and Jim Murray, knowing I couldn’t match up. Besides, I’d done that before, too, and can tell you it wasn’t a lot of fun.

So, if you’re not going to write about events or people, you’re pretty much stuck with yourself as a topic. What a drearily self-centered agenda! I began counting the times “I” appeared in each piece, wondering when I’d have to start writing about someone more interesting than myself.

Of course, the antidote to this kind of icky solipsism is the idea that the writer can sometimes lose himself in a subject enough to bring that subject alive. He kind of sets the stage, then gets off it. So, as I began writing many of these columns, it was with the idea that I’d offer the reader something other than myself.

Looking back, it’s interesting to see just what this has been. Dogs, books and writing, travel adventures, snakes, hunting, tennis, bodysurfing, movies and fathers have each been the subject of multiple columns.

There have also been one-time forays into watching grass grow, seeing stars fall, a trapeze artist who crashed, getting a suntan, the Laguna fire, how to organize your mail, spring, autumn, report cards, shopping, old men.

A great many of the pieces feature myself as the subject, not just the fulcrum around which tales are spun. They are plainly, obviously, unquestionably me.

Several columns are about my wife--her life and illness and passing. These, too, are about me, because there is no way to write about someone you loved without writing about the way you loved her.

So here it comes, looping back into the column I had tried to write myself out of, a comet with my own face on it. At some point, you just hope that what you’ve been through is what other people have been through too.

I thank all of you who have borne with me. It’s truly been an honor to have your attention for a few minutes each month.