FINISHING A NOVEL FIFTY YEARS AFTER STARTING IT
The story behind Queensborough Rock, the historical fiction/rock 'n' roll novel fifty years in the making.
Fifty or so years ago I was working on an MA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. I was a whiz kid who graduated Queens College (CUNY) at age twenty, took the obligatory six months of soul-searching in Europe and Morocco, and came back determined to be a writer. SFSU accepted me, and off I went to the beautiful and exotic “Baghdad By the Bay.” A year and a half years later I had a newly minted MA (with Honors, I might add.) In fact, somewhere is the bowels of the SF State U Library lies Collected Short Stories, by Stephen Shaiken.
However, becoming the next Hemingway or Fitzgerald was not my first dream of a life amidst the arts. Shortly after graduating college I decided that a friend of mine, a talented singer-songwriter, was separated from stardom only by the lack of management, and who better than me to fill that role? Got him a backup band, put him in a studio and made a demo tape , got him gigs, caught the attention of some record labels, even got an audition at a major label. However, my star did not really want that life and followed a different path, one that was actually made for him, and became one of America’s leading yoga teachers. Even though I never got very far as a rock manager, it was one of the most interesting and exciting episodes of my life, so it comes as no surprise that I began writing about it when I fancied myself a writer.
It was only after my rock managerial stint, immediately followed by the journey through Europe and Morocco that I settled upon the idea of writing as a career. I had dabbled in writing fiction, even taking a class in creative writing and two poems were published in a magazine that promptly disappeared. Going off to San Francisco and devoting myself to writing seemed like the best way to kickstart this plan.
In 1973, while I was in graduate school, I wrote the first ten thousand words of a novel based on my adventures in rock ‘n’ roll. It opened with the protagonist-based on me of course- waiting anxiously at a record label office where one of their big shots has heard the tape he produced. Right at the start there was a memorable character, Duke Schwartz, head of A&R at Luna Records. The next two chapters developed the protagonist , showing his daily existence as a struggling rock manager in New York City circa 1970. (Jack Bernstein, the fictional loosely-based version Stephen Shaiken.) That was as far as I got by the time I received by graduate degree.
You’d expect to hear that upon graduation, I locked myself up in a room to finish what would have been my first novel. (I’ve now got five published and available on Amazon, all available as ebook and paperback, and as paperback from Barnes & Noble and other major booksellers.) However, something called life got in the way, which is why Queensborough Rock and it’s protagonist, Jack Bernstein, did not come to life until the very end of 2022.
My brief journey through the world of rock ‘n’ roll taught me at least one thing: art has a business component, and if you’re not making any money, it probably means no one is paying for your art, and since everyone must eat, that won’t work for long. In the novel, Queensborough Rock, Jack Bernstein must always deal with this existential threat to success. So would I, based on what real writers told me of their lives. Few made the big bucks from writing, and almost all had to supplement their incomes as teachers, book reviewers, or taking freelance commercial writing assignments they hated.
It turned out that I found a way to earn a good living and enjoy myself, or at least that’s what I thought back then. (Actually, overall, it was the right choice for me.)
Hearing Charles Garry made me want to be a criminal defense lawyer
My teacher, thesis advisor, and friend, Kay Boyle, was one of the premier writers from the end of WWI through the seventies. It’s a shame more people are not reading her work today. I urge you to take a look at her short stories and novels. She was a progressive, humanistic person ahead of her time.
Kay told me one day that she saw something in me that caused her to believe I was destined to be a criminal defense lawyer, a profession I had not given much thought to pursuing. She explained that many great writers were also lawyers, and gave me a list to read. More than that, she told me she was co-teaching a class with a friend of hers, the well-known radical defense lawyer Charles Garry. He was going to talk about his life as a defense lawyer, and she felt strongly I ought to come and listen. Such was my respect for Kay Boyle that I agreed to be there the next day.
It was a day that changed my life.
I have met many great defense lawyers in my decades-long career, but few if any compare to Charles Garry. His presentation was inspirational and compelling. It was not only the clarity of his explanations of the legal process, from charging the crime, through jury selection, through trial, to addressing the racism inherent in the judicial system; it was his intense commitment to fairness and justice for every human being.
I left that lecture knowing what I was going to do with my life.
Not long afterward, I applied to a few law schools. Most of them turned me down, but Brooklyn Law School, in the very place of my birth, accepted me and offered a small stipend. With the New York State Regents Scholarship all law students were eligible to receive, plus a little cab driving in the first year until I could convince criminal lawyer to hire me as a clerk, I’d get by. I did.
Three years at Brooklyn Law School were followed by three and a half as a criminal defense lawyer in Brooklyn with the Legal Aid Society. After that, I got married, moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where I raised a family and practiced law. Sad to say, very little writing, a few false starts at a novel and some short stories, some of which also saw new life decades later.
It’s not so easy to pick up after a fifty year break.
In the Spring of 2021, I was rummaging around the far ends of a closet when I spied a small yellow battered suitcase. I’d lugged this valise around the country with me for several decades and immediately recognized it and recalled its contents. It was a collection of all the writing I did just before, during, and just after my graduate school days.
I pulled it from the closet, opened it, and went through the contents. Among these historical documents sat a weathered brown envelope with several drafts of the start of the novel I began all those years ago. This work was done before the age of personal computers; my method was to write a draft by hand, edit with a red pen, rewrite it by hand, edit again, type a new draft, edit once more (maybe no red pen this time) and retype once more. I read thirty six page typewritten last version, around ten thousand words.
After my unexpected discovery, I started thinking again about those days in the rock world and the incredible experiences it brought. I clearly remembered many of the fascinating characters I encountered. This all happened fifty plus years ago, when America was a very different place. Most of the technology we rely on today and take for granted were not even pipe dream material back then. Social mores and attitudes were often Neanderthal by contemporary standards.
The language was not even the same. Aside from the terms injected by technology, we don’t use the same slang terms. With cell phones, cable television and the internet, we know more about what’s going on around us and we know it sooner. Young people today have options beyond the pale of comprehension back in the Sixties. In the not-so hidden background was an unpopular war that killed over 50,000 of our generation. America hasn’t seen military casualties like that since and let’s hope it never does.
The memories that were fresh in 1973-74 are not forgotten or distorted, but even so, I’d be lying if I denied it took some mental work to recall and reconstruct as much as I did and then changed, exaggerated and fabricated in the way of all true fiction writers.
It became an historical novel as well as a rock ‘n’ roll novel.
When I wrote those first 10,000 words, I was writing a rock ‘n’ roll novel. There weren’t a whole lot written back ten, so there were no templates or models to look at for guidance.
When I decided to finish what was started so long ago, I was still seeing the novel as a rock ‘n’ roll story, and of course it is. It is also a work of historical fiction, and that required a certain skill set I never anticipated back in 1973. Recognizing that language, attitudes and technology have changed is one thing; working it into historical fiction requires great focus on detail and attention to how the old methods made for a different situation than today.
There’s no official definition of what is historical fiction, but it’s generally agreed it’s set in the past, at least thirty years, but many say fifty. (Either way, Queensborough Rock is covered!) Historical fiction is usually more than just a period piece, and mixes real people with fictional characters, real events with fictional ones, and while not works of scholarship, do their very best to get the details right. This means that if I’m writing about a particular venue, I better get the location right. If I have a character listening to a song or album, I better have checked to make it sure it was released at that time. If I refer to real events of the time, I better get the facts straight. This places on writers of historical fiction an increased burden of research. Be aware: if you’re writing about the Sixties or Seventies, there are going to be a lot of readers who were around then and recall it well. They’ll spot a blatant error a mile away. No doubt that’s true of almost any era of interest enough for an author to write about it.
How does a writer pick up a piece after fifty years?
With great care and great thought, and that’s for starters.
The first issue to be resolved is the voice. There’s just no way that a man of seventy plus years is going to sound the same as a man of twenty three years. But when we are talking about the same man, it is a bit easier to imagine how that twenty three year old would sound today and how he thinks. I mean after all, we are talking about me! I was writing in the third person, which meant the real change had to be in the voice of the unknown narrator. I decided on a course of keeping the narration as matter-of-fact as possible and let the characters be defined through their dialogue, their actions and their interactions. The characters talk like they would in the period, but the naaration is not.
This meant going back and smoothing out the voice from 1973 so that it was consistent with the voice being written in 2021 and 2022. A lot of adjectives went by the board as did several antiquated expressions.
I’ve already mentioned research. Things that I took for granted back in those days haven’t been seen for a very long time. Trying to recall the look and feel of a greasy spoon diner, then the taste. Try to recall looking for a phone booth and praying you have the right change. Cars that came with chokes and clutches. Television was limited to a handful of corporate networks and radio had just expanded the FM market into rock. The height of audiophile technology revolved around needles, cartridges, amplifiers and preamps that were primitive and unrefined by today’s standards. Studios used tape-when was the last time you saw any-and enhanced vinyl record recordings with overdubbing, multiple tracks and effects that would seem simplistic and subpar today.
It was a wonderful personal experience to revisit what was one of the defining times of my life; maybe I failed to become the next famous manager, but I had some marvelous experiences and did get to see music from the inside. When I traced them down in the catacombs of my mind, every moment was enjoyable. However the book winds up doing far down the road, it was the most enjoyable writing experience I have had. I’m so glad others have liked the novel and hope many more will join them.
Would Queensborough Rock appeal to readers of any specific books?
Absolutely. The first that comes to mind is the fabulously successful Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Another is Utopia Avenue, by David Mitchell. I’d also recommend it to readers who enjoyed A Visit From the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan
So how has Queensborough Rock been received?
Quite well so far. All reviews are 4 or 5 stars and the overall star rating is 4.4 on Amazon.
The book has generated a wide range of publicity. It’s been reviewed by some credible rock e-journals, and I’ve been interviewed on two podcasts about the novel.
Listen to my interview on Booked on Rock
Listen to my interview on The Gritty Hour
Visit the Amazon page for Queensborough Rock, where you can read a sample, see what others thought, buy an ebook or paperback edition, or read it on Kindle Unlimited
Click here to visit the Amazon page for Queensborough Rock
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