Hard Times
Well, I found out yesteday before boarding my plane back to NYC from LA that the New York Times Book Review review of my book that will be published March 4th is a very bad one. An utter pan. It didn’t throw my back out any further. But, I do have to admit I broke the promise I made in the last line of the previous post: I did weep a bit. Not for me exactly - though some of the salty tears were certainly selfish ones - but for my brother and sister. How can I put this without sounding squishy and too emotional? I have always wanted them to be proud of me and I had a fantasy of getting a great review in the New York Times and celebrating it with them - they are flying up from Mississippi for the dinner that Diane von Furstenberg and Barry Diller are so graciously giving me - and looking into their eyes and seeing pride in their big brother. I have always had guilt about leaving home at 16 to go to college and then at 19 to move to New York and never really being there for them. I coped with our tragic family history by walking into my bedroom and shutting the door - both figuratively and literally. One thing a sissy must always deal with as he grows up is seeing disappointment and embarrassment in the eyes of those who love him anyway but are still unable to hide that tincture of those two emotions that colors their looks his way. It is a tincture I’m going to have to deal with for a few weeks now after others read the review. But I’ve survived worse - the book attests to that - and I’ll survive this. It is finally only two columns of type in a newspaper supplement. As I was waking up this morning, I turned on the television and watched a segment on the Today Show about a woman who had lost her beautiful husband in Iraq. That put it in perspective for me. I’ve prayed a lot about this in the last 24 hours - yes, I am prayful believe or not - and I think pushing the remote control from my bed and watching that segment as I started the day, as tragic as it was for the woman and her husband and her kids, was an answered prayer for me. The woman’s quiet dignity was a balm. Indeed, for those of you who’ve read the book already - and for those of you who will - I heard Epiphany’s voice this morning, “Chiiiild, I’m proud of you. Who cares what no Norah Vincent thinks of us two.”
Norah Vincent is the writer the New York Times assigned to review the book. She wrote her own book last year about living life in masculine guise. In her guise as critic, she took it upon herself - as if she were still posing as a butch guy - to beat up, predictably so, on a sissy. Her own book is part of the literature of empathy, I guess is a way to put it, a kind of Keatsian “negative capability,” though I think it would be a better description of her oeuvre to say she is a less humorous, less, yes, ballsy George Plimpton. (Okay, that’s my one obligatory swipe back at her.) Vincent is entitled to her opinions of me. I wish they weren’t published in the Times. But I had no control over that. I Googled her and discovered that she is a rightwing-leaning lesbian who writes polemically, not lyrically, and has no affinity at all, according to those who know her, for Southern gothic literature. So I don’t think the Times could have chosen anyone further afield from my target audience. The only thing that finally will always upset me about her review is that she totally ignored the African American aspects of the book. She doesn’t even acknowledge that there are African Amercians in the book. Indeed, three of the most important people in my life were African Americans - even though one was my imaginary friend growing up. Mississippi Sissy is a story about race as much as anything else. The fact that she is so myopically Caucasian to ignore that part of the book hurt more than anything and, I feel, is racist by implication. But perhaps it was edited out for space reasons. I wish the whole review had been.
But it wasn’t. So I have to deal with it. I just hope it spurs all you people out there who are reading this blog to buy extra copies and and tell your friends about the book if it touches you in any way. With your help and support, I’ll get past this. Indeed, it is the emotional support of friends and strangers throughout my life that has enabled an orphaned Mississippi sissy to get to this point in his life, a point at which he can write on his blog about a review of his book in the New York Times.
February 27th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
I had always wondered what ever happened to you, Kevin. Now I know. Congratulations on your Memoir. You may remember me from Paris a few years back. You were staying in Paris working for Vanity Fair at the time. I was an African American guy that you befriended who worked at a university there. Do you recall? I think you lived in St. Germain des Pres, if I’m not mistaken. I’d love to keep in touch. From one Southerner to another.
TRP
February 27th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
Kevin, go re-read your positive reviews and try to put the negative one behind you. I know, I know, the negatives sting like bloody hell, but you have a positive from Publisher’s Weekly, man!
AND, weird as it sounds, I know you’re aware even negative publicity is publicity. Regardless of what’s written, something in her review may spur someone to read your book him/herself.
We’ll keep on pushing, Kevin. If I find any more aces up my sleeve I’ll play them for you.
Lisa
February 28th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Kevin, I’m your sister Karole’s childhood friend, Lori. I called Karole on her birthday and got the scoop on your book and the “book party.” For what it’s worth, I’m so proud of you and so amazed at what you’ve accomplished, the artist you are, and the wonderfully interesting life you’ve created for yourself. Incidentally, my husband and I (and a cast of thousands) will be traveling to NY (march 9 - 14) for a performance of Mozart’s Solemn Vespers at Carnegie Hall on the 12th. My husband will be conducting the choir from Kingwood, TX. I’ll be thinking of you and Kim and Karole as you celebrate the book and hoping you have a great time together.
March 1st, 2007 at 5:52 am
Sorry to hear about the NYT review, Kevin…
Would you be interested in submitting a “book notes” essay (authors create and discuss a music playlist for their book) for Mississippi Sissy on my (mostly) music blog, Largehearted Boy? In the past, memoirs have made excellent submissions (Hillary Carlip, Dirk Jensen, Lisa carver, to name a few.
http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/book_notes/
E-mail me if you are interested, and thanks for considering participating.
March 1st, 2007 at 5:56 am
Cheers to one of our own! Please contact us via our web site!
Jody Renaldo; Executive director
Equality Mississippi
www.equality.ms
March 1st, 2007 at 11:19 am
Kevin, there are not 6 degrees of separation, maybe two…..I live in Jackson, MS and am a newly out bi/gay man after 24 years of committed and loving marriage. I had info on your book signing in Vicksburg sent to me and thus read your blog. I was in NYC for around 10 days mixing business with pleasure and was supposed to attend the Bailey House benefit, but did not make it, returning later than expected from a business meeting in Boston. I had been invited by one of my brother’s friend, John Bartlett. He and his partner were involved in the benefit. Small world…..
I look forward to attending your reading either at Lemuria or Vicksburg. Hell had we known, I’d have been glad to have a drink with You at The Eagle in NYC…..I was in NYC that evening, alone as well. Amazingly, I also saw Factory Girl that weekend….I’ve been single for 7 years and understand what it’s like to live a full, whole life…..alone. Be in touch and perhaps we can have that drink in Mississippi. Bill
March 1st, 2007 at 11:20 am
Also, rejection is tough, but we must understand, we are not in charge of the world…..just how we repond to it.
March 1st, 2007 at 1:14 pm
Dear Kevin:
My name is Barry Raine and I am writing to you because I have just started to read your book, which I ordered through a Key West book store. I am overwhelmed by it, in its early pages, and was itching to let you know how much I admire your candor.
I am a 44-year-old gay man, also a southerner, from New Orleans and Long Beach,MS, who has lived in NYC for the past 22 years. I wrote a memoir, “Where the River Bends,” which came out in 2003 and was published by Joyce Carol Oates’s Ontario Review Press. The book is about a violent crime in New Orleans in 1981 during which my brother and two friends and I were robbed at gunpoint, my pretend girlfriend was raped, and we were terrorized in Aubudon Park for a long time. The book is a look back, after many years in NY, at the long term effects of a violent crime and on race, class, society and growing up, as I did, in a blue collar family in the south when I knew I was different, had literary aspirations, and also felt like a freak for most of my life there.
I have admired your work for a long time, and have read many of your pieces. Your narrative skills always impressed me and your profiles are so well layered and textured. As a non-fiction writing instructor at Penn in Philadelphia, I have used you in my classes as an example of an excellent profile writer.
I am now spending a few months out of NY, between Key West and New Orleans, as I try to finish another book. I first came to Key West 20 years ago, on the Tennessee Williams trail, and I loved it because it reminded me of the good things about New Orleans that I missed. But I could spend time here and be out and that was a great time here-a vibrant gay community, full of writers etc. I had lived in South Beach and hated it, found it vapid and one-note. Now, Key West has become less gay and less literary, and more about stainless steel SubZeros than about bohemian living.
RE: the TIMES review: as my boss at Simon & Schuster used to say,” I hate the fucking TBR!”
All the best to you, Kevin. You are an excellent writer-in your book and on your blog as well.
With admiration,
Barry Raine
March 2nd, 2007 at 2:20 am
We can’t wait to have you here at Square Books! Chin up!
March 2nd, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Oscar Wilde once said that to love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. So I am always amazed by people who have achieved great success but seem not to love themselves. How did you become the person you are?
March 3rd, 2007 at 11:32 am
I was so completely appalled by that review. I wrote the following to the editor of the Book Review:
To the editor:
Norah Vincent’s job is to assess Kevin Sessum’s new book, Mississippi Sissy. She has the right, of course, to say, even if I or others find it unfathomable, that he “does not have a voice” or to judge his writing in whatever way she sees fit.
In short, her assessment is incomprehensible to me. But what is crystal clear to me is not only her brutally patronizing condescension, but an almost pathological meanness that courses through the entire review. I literally felt that I was watching the author being bludgeoned, attacked, abused and mocked, all over again. Not just him, but anyone who was orphaned, molested, has seen a friend die, or who has been gay in a brutally hostile environment. Is not all of great literature and art about the same tragedies and sorrows, interpreted and recounted in new ways? Say you don’t like the writing — that is your job. But Vincent’s review was not akin to “pan[ning] a movie about the Holocaust.” It was as if she ruthlessly mocked, in an intensely personal way, those who experienced it. Worse, she declared that she is just oh-so-bored by it all, which is the most profound and disturbing cynicism possible.
No, she doesn’t just “look like a boor or a bully.” She appears frighteningly cruel, abusive and soulless. My heart shudders.
Tim Tompkins
March 4th, 2007 at 9:35 am
I am seldom moved to comment on a review, and I sheepishly admit that sometimes a bad review is a guilty pleasure to read. I’m usually drawn to the story of an interesting failure. Yet the tone of the Times piece was, even to my pointed ears, numbingly cruel, almost clinically dismissive (i.e “he does not have a voice”). I would hope that sensitive readers give your story a reading of their own. I don’t know that I would have purchased your book before reading today’s paper, but I may now pick up a copy just to understand the critic’s motivation here. It’s a bit like literary forensics. Perhaps there are other readers like me.
March 5th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
1. I’m a queer Southern writer too who found you through a comment left on your blog linking to my site where I hated on Norah Vincent.
2. Norah’s a total hack writer. Don’t let her get to you.
3. Ohmygod I *wish* my book had been in the NYTimes! What an *honor*!
March 11th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
part of your beauty is your honesty. I am an outsider but I am proud of you. words form little meaning sometimes; you’re loved and respected
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:17 am
May 24th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
I disagree with the NY Times, I found this book interesting and entertaining. In a number of instances, I could relate to you and your situation. I flet it was warm and honest. Anytime you would like to discuss it, I’d be glad to. Sometimes Critics pan things thay don’t understand or want to understand.