Self-Defense by Jonathan Kellerman Read Free Book Online

houses. The
circulation slip showed it hadn’t been checked out in three years. I went to
the periodicals section and lugged volume after volume of bound magazines to an
empty carrel. When my arms grew sore, I sat down to read.
    Command: Shed the Light turned out to be Lowell’s first book in
ten years, its predecessor an anthology of previously published short stories.
The New Year’s release date was also Lowell’s fiftieth birthday. The book had
attracted a lot of attention: six-figure advance, main selection by one of the
book clubs, foreign rights sold in twenty-three countries, even a film option
by an independent production company in Hollywood, which seemed odd for poetry.
    Then came the critics. One major newspaper
called the work “self-consciously gloomy and stunningly amateurish and, this
writer suspects, a calculated effort on the part of Mr. Lowell to snare the
youth market.” Another, describing Lowell’s career as “glorious, lusty, and
historically indelible,” gave him credit for taking risks but labeled his verse
“only very occasionally pungent, more frequently vapid and sickening, morose
and incoherent. Glory has yielded to vainglory.”
    Lots more in that key, with one exception:
A Columbia University doctoral student named Denton Mellors, writing in the Manhattan Book Review, rhapsodized “darkly enchanting, rich with lyric
texture.”
    From what I could tell, Lowell hadn’t
reacted to the debacle publicly. A bottom-of-the-page paragraph in the January
twenty-fourth Publishers Journal noted that sales of the book were
“significantly below expectations.” Similar articles appeared in other
magazines, ruminating on the death of contemporary poetry and speculating as to
where M. Bayard Lowell had gone wrong.
    In March, the Manhattan Book Review noted that Lowell was rumored to have left the country, destination unknown. In
June, a cheeky British glossy reported his presence in a small village in the
Cotswolds.
    Having confirmed that the
sweatered-and-capped personage meandering among the sheep was indeed the
once-touted American, we tried to approach but were accosted by two rather
formidable mastiffs who showed no interest in our bangers-and-chips and
convinced us by dint of grease-and-growl to beat a hasty retreat. What has
happened, we wonder, to Mr. Lowell’s once insatiable Yankish appetite for
attention? Ah, fleeting fame!
    Other foreign sightings followed
throughout that summer: Italy, Greece, Morocco, Japan. Then, in September, the Los Angeles Times Book Review announced that “Pulitzer prize-winning
author M. Bayard Lowell” would be relocating to Southern California and
contributing occasional essays to the supplement. In December, the Hot Property
column in the Times Real Estate section reported that Lowell had just
closed escrow on fifty acres in Topanga Canyon.
    Sources say it is a heavily wooded, rustic
campsite in need of repair. Last utilized as a nudist colony, it is off the
beaten track and seems perfect for Lowell’s new Salingeresque identity. Or
maybe the author-cum-artist is simply traveling West for the weather.
    May: Lowell attended a PEN benefit for
political prisoners, a “star-studded gala” at the Malibu home of Curtis App, a
film producer. Two more Westside parties in April, one in Beverly Hills, one in
Pacific Palisades. Lowell, newly bearded and wearing a blue denim suit, was
spotted talking to the current Playmate of the Month. When approached by a
reporter, he walked away.
    In June, he delivered a keynote speech at
a literacy fund-raiser where he announced the creation of an artists’ and
writers’ retreat on his Topanga land.
    “It will be a sanctum,” he said, “and it
will be called Sanctum. A blank palette upon which the gifted human will be
free to struggle, squiggle, squirt, splotch, deviate, divert, digress, dig in
the dirt, and howsoever indulge the Great Id. Art pushes through the hymen of
banality only when the nerves are allowed to twang