This essay was written for QuailBellMagazine.com and it was so very good for me that the executive editor requested I write it. That I'm publishing my first draft here is of questionable ethics. But since the edited article is buried without being retrievable by their readers from anywhere such as their homepage, they apparently don't understand the book's and essay's intent to raise the planet's intellectual awareness. Maybe NOT BEING ANYONE'S SYCOPHANT is why they'd prefer to not be used in the hammer and cycle's ad campaign later this year. Obviously the essay is something I wanted to say and I don't think it deserves a permanent burial.
Imagine a dog after a stick for a sense of how I pursued The Hammer and Cycle Messenger Service. Even unseen, hidden, distracted, and confused, the dog still wants that stick. While its the protagonist’s proven interest in solving the puzzle of the The Cold War since age seven, that reveals the novel’s one stick caught thrown half a century ago in human years. History’s cycles are some boomerang, huh? That the future hopefully reads wasn’t dropped.
The idea a novel could do the utilitarian trick of shattering and splicing adverse ideologies together was kindled in the Spring of 1978. Another student had even raised their hand for clarification when our Russian and Soviet History professor, Dr. John E. Evans described the theory as fact that Russia’s mid-19th Century novelists inspired the 20th’s revolutionary zeal. “Yes, yes,” he answered firmly. “Most definitely.” Then stepping back to his podium, likely caught my eyes bug at the thought - you really just said that! And it was of course mentioned the idealism backfired. But notice how that precise moment stood out and remained my direction even two decades after the Cold War’s symbolic if not literal end. Two decades late? Indeed.
The title took another ten years to occur to me in early 1988 when the book’s primary action begins. I was pressing myself that it was time to make a move with my life or lead one more routine, when the specific thought hit me with certainty that there must be something to be done with that catchy name, Armand Hammer. It was early evening and the labor day done and I’d ridden my bike slowly down Broadway south, on the right hand side, and experienced joy and elation realizing that if figured out, the Soviet hammer and sickle lends significance to the title hammer and cycle. Then to concentrate placed my foot on the curb of the thin traffic island between 34th and 33rd, and thought through messenger service sounding best and in cartoon panels except I can’t draw a lick.
Then less than a year later feeling dwarfed by the substantial title’s responsibility, but dully aware I needed an event to wrap story around, I was on Manhattan’s Lower East Side to videotape the band Paris Green at the Pyramid Club on Avenue A. Paris Green were the early show and the band was commiserating at a nearby apartment while I sauntered around the vacant backroom performance space alone with guitarist Rob(ert) Wyatt’s camera. I remember standing by the wall looking down at the video recorder on a table. Then turning when an older gentleman walked through the entrance curtain over to me, the only one there, asking when the band would play and I said they’d be here soon and wondered if they were late?
He said he didn’t know either and leaving, smiled, thanking me. And I realized when magazine publisher Malcolm Forbes turned to leave it was just a matter of having the guts to speak up and fear of facing the regret.
I said, “Wait,” and asked, “Aren’t you Malcolm Forbes?” Smiling he said, “Yes I am. I’m Malcolm Forbes.”
I told him I’d even thought about having something to say if I ever ran into him. His celebrity was all over the New York press. His luxury yacht The Highlander a society destination. Plus he’d floated his huge hot-air balloons of diverse characters, all over the planet, promoting the idea of making capitalism fun for everyone. So I’d wanted to thank him for doing that. He had to tell me to stop calling him the richest man in the world because I’d nervously repeated the expression. I apologized, and of course his FORBES published the statistics showing he was nowhere near the richest list. He enjoyed plugging his magazine.
Then I’m fairly sure when the glossy points were talked out, he was leaving and I “oh yeah” stopped him again. Remembering one more thing that might interest him. That got the conversation really going when I told him the idea for The Hammer and Cycle Messenger Service using Dr. Armand Hammer and promoting the underutilized ideal of capitalism from the bottom up.
To facilitate my capturing Dr. Hammer’s mannerisms, Malcolm wanted to set up a lunch for me with Dr. Hammer who’d “do anything” for him. I gutlessly refrained to avoid the public taint of personal association with the communist stigma. It wasn’t personal. But projecting an independent opinion was that important to me. Which Malcolm later agreed, before leaving, was best to be cautious about in our world’s political climate.
Asked directly about Dr. Hammer’s communist links, Malcolm thought he was just caught in the middle by his loyalty to his father as my opportunist research speculates. I remember Malcolm grinned when he figured out I’d not even seen Dr. Hammer’s recently published photography-book of himself. Where besides his umbilical telephone use, I later learned the book’s centerfold was Dr. Hammer lounging on the deck of Malcolm’s yacht with television journalist, Barbara Walters. Then when Malcolm told me he’d caught Dr. Hammer counterfeiting Fabergé Eggs, I said the counterfeits would be valuable, and the steam rose in him with real anger because his authentic eggs were that important to him. I asked him to see it the other way as curiosities and he said he could. But he was angry. It seems he let Dr. Hammer out of that tight squeeze but wouldn’t disclose specifics. I was already committed to reading everything I could and learning the connections that led to Dr. Hammer’s charmed life.
Malcolm offered to provide an editor. He said, “You’ll need one. Everything won’t happen in your head.” I took him seriously. I said I knew and would seek his help through his office when I’d figured out more of the book. He said I should accept his help then and even told me he was dying to emphasize how much he wanted to help. I didn’t want to believe it and didn’t want him to die. But when asked where, I voted to circulate money in Africa for Malcolm’s big 70th birthday extravaganza and silent farewell party. We’d become friends. He’d seen a family resemblance to someone he remembered, my advertising legend uncle, J. K. Fraser. Malcolm encouraged me to visit Cornell’s Founder’s Wall where my aunt and uncle are chiseled. Then Malcolm praised Princeton’s glory because the Cornell prestige thing was so thick.
When we went to the front room saloon where his friend waited, Malcolm shook hands with the band and was told their motorcycles couldn’t be parked on the sidewalk. So they left, having other places to go. But Malcolm said what we’d talked about was enough and has entailed a profound significance for me, touched on through these highlights. The conversation having meant enough for me to imagine if political idolatry were shaken enough, these memories would have first appeared as a column in FORBES called Legacy that then interviews people about theirs.
In 1989 John Robinson at Archive Film asked what I thought of events in Tiananmen Square and my frame of mind answered I needed a similar big event to hook a story to in the Soviet Union. Then paced the 29th Street Manhattan apartment during the 1991 Soviet August Coup. Imagining the messenger hiding in a dacha outside Moscow, from an official enforcing the communist dream and the plot stepped up to the title’s plate.
The 1990s were spent in fits but started with realizing ideals had to embody real people. An identity required the central character’s name. I’d walked a block down Second Avenue around the corner from Kurt Vonnegut’s after leaving Howard Winer’s 50th Street apartment with his “for the airplane” copy of Forrest Gump in my hip pocket. I thought success catches the market’s attention and the film version’s Tom Hanks was a winner and Hank an All-American name. While Greenway stood for capitalism’s path properly paved. Hank Greenway. Soon after Environmental Economist Charlie Komanoff dropped by the 29th Street apartment and when I told him the protagonist’s name, he told me the cool coincidence Greenway was just officially adopted as the name for safe bike paths criss-crossing America. Nice.
Every writer wants to write a big deal and though nothing substantial was written yet, out of respect I thought the novel should deserve the biggest literary agent in the business to have proper impact. Andrew Wylie just happened to be a client of Elite Couriers who I rode with throughout the 1990s. During those years The Wylie Agency was my favorite place to wait for a package in the evening surrounded by bookshelves. I wish I remember the guy’s name who worked for Mr. Wylie then, when their office was smaller. But my sense was networking wouldn’t replace what had to be accomplished internally. But my reclusiveness was overcome sitting enough evenings among their client Allen Ginsberg’s books. I hand-delivered my hand-written apology for that time I’d turned away when Mr. Ginsberg and I smiled passing on Second Avenue near 9th Street. My letter wasn’t answered but possibly noticed because when I dropped off my New York Cycling Video and Film Festival flyer, the guy said you should be writing something, you have his attention. “Do you know how hard people try to get his attention?” I said I’m bringing something published in a couple of weeks that includes the book’s title. A January 1995 Total TV review of Diane English’s Double Rush that includes the author’s description - His novel, The Hammer and Cycle Messenger Service seeks a publisher. I knew who I wanted for an agent. Eight months later I dropped off the Total TV Law and Order essay. Then several years after in Sarah Chalfant’s apartment, while waiting for her package, she dragged it out of me that I hadn’t figured out the novel yet and nicely left me with “at least you know it’ll be read.” I was still noticed semi-officially. May 1998 I dropped off my last Total TV essay on the retirement of Diane English’s Murphy Brown and a few weeks later on the street the woman I’d delivered it to said, “they want you to keep bringing things.”
I had mentioned to Malcolm Forbes that the title was intimidating. How the actor Drew Bongianni had only just recently introduced me to his childhood friend, Mike Hammer and though the name of the 1950s communist foe was just coincidence, it was a big one for me. In 1994 Mike Hammer was a Total TV editor and since I’d missed out on CBS Double Rush money that filtered among some bike couriers, my pitch to Mike was I deserved a taste by writing a review. He sold it to his boss and the gig was official when a group of us went to an Elvis Costello concert in Central Park. It was while walking south on the east side of Fifth Avenue beside the Henry Clay Frick Museum, before crossing to enter the park, that Executive Editor Jay B. Gissen told me he had worked for Malcolm Forbes. The next meeting Mike informed me he was going to TV Guide and Mr. Gissen would edit the Double Rush review. Becoming The Hammer and Cycle Messenger Service editor Malcolm and I wanted. Though I did later discover that FORBES’ chief at the time Malcolm and I met, was James Cook who’d had a personal drinking relationship with Dr. Hammer’s brother Viktor who had keys to skeletons written into Mr. Cook’s fictional portrayal of the Hammers, Fellow Travelers.
Jay is the right man. He loaned me the James Ellroy novel(s) of just two word sentences that inspire explanation, cadence and rhythm. He had all the novels of John LeCarré and Martin Cruz Smith. I wasn't reigned in and encouraged to explore. But first I wrote something just for Jay to see anything and he told me not to give him any more crap like that wasting his time. Everything was in place. I knew how the book ended and started with a first chapter party emulating the end’s. Only the first party is after the accident in the hospital with courier friends. Before Hank actually meets Dr. Hammer. Then Mr. Greenway would face his fate on his last night’s goodbye bike tour of Manhattan with the conservative lawyer Hank could compromise with to accept his ticket to Moscow. I had vignettes that breathed. But no book.
My bike courier job allowed the freedom to think, but I fell short financially. It was so bad I had a portion of manuscript delivered to The Wylie Agency that I wouldn’t even show Mr. Gissen. I lost the Manhattan apartment and slept through the winter in a Rockaway Beach hotel then went to LA for six months in 1999. I learned the desert’s not warm at night because I’d wanted to take the train leaving hundreds less pauper money left. But I saw people slept in boxes so I followed their experience catty-corner from the Sheriff’s downtown office. One night a patrol car even roused me with a light and I stuck my head out and they said sleep somewhere else and I didn’t move. I was more afraid of being around people sleeping on the street than sleeping across from the Sheriff’s.
Parents don’t send their kids to school to financially fall apart? But after Jay and Mike loaned money for a month in a 55 dollar a week room without TV, where I read On The Road again, one night back in the box a woman woke me screaming at the sky that she didn’t want to walk that route then looked at me in the box and said, “you shouldn’t be here, go to my church.” Then threw a dollar at me and pointed in the direction of the Gless Street Dolores Mission where I went the next day around five as nothing else fell in my lap in the library.
I slept and ate with Mexicans who loved having a gringo around and taught me dominoes. I read the Want Ads but the charity gig required actual interviewing. So I rode past the first line of mountains and Mulholland Drive and was roused by security for sleeping beside a small plaza parking lot. Because, having taken to Dr. Hammer’s advocating afternoon naps, I’d rested wherever I wanted in New York. I refused to accept the absurdity of punishment and had to design a good explanation for the security guard’s bosses. Then sat for an audience of three presentation where we were told the job used to pay so much an hour for placing flyers on car windshields in parking lots. But now their system was the flyer’s code buyers gave when customers actually bought their product.
To their, “hey where’re you going” I was vehement I’d call and returned to the church where the supervisor Arturo wanted an explanation why I didn’t want the job from the people who’d just called because his phone was on their application. The gig had holes. Another time Arturo sent me to a meeting where a legitimate organization was trying to form a cooperative for street-corner laborers. I was asked to leave to remove the question of whether or not I was a spy. What a kick.
I went to a Los Angeles Bicycle Coalition meeting and used Charlie Komanoff’s name leading to friends and a job packing boxes of camera equipment on the Sunset Boulevard. Three months later not writing the novel there, I came back from LA to NYC on the three-day Greyhound bus trip.
Then messengered nine months and took six weeks in the summer of 2000 to camp and stay in small Central Florida hotels around where I grew up. Sleeping alone on little Echo Lake, but not far from other Ocala National Forest campsites, I woke to watching a bear drink on the other side past the alligator’s spot and read Anatoly Rybakov’s Children of the Arbat wondering what this new pivotal name would do, that had come to me transitioning back from LA. Colonel Srilenko. Colonel felt the right rank between captain and general for defending communism’s noble quest.
Back in New York I met my wife and tried writing a short fiction for magazines and money. One idea was every paragraph began with the word So. Then, luckily just months later, I saw an old issue of The New Yorker where Rick Moody did that exact same thing. Plus nothing could interest me like the novel. So I began on the page in earnest after riding west on 27th Street between Broadway and Sixth, riddling myself with how. How will I finally write it and the answer was just be your sarcastic self and explain.
I started all over with the end and began with what became the second paragraph. Where Hank Greenway explains how he ended up hiding in an attic from the vanguard of the proletariat, Srilenko.
I wrote Saturdays and Sundays. Then for some months woke at 4 AM weekdays to work till 9 AM then arrive after the regular job started. A compromise On Point’s James Dudley gave me and relinquished more and more of till I’d arrive at 3 PM just to finish the day. Whatever the schedule was, the book started the day so nothing interfered. The time of my life was spent living inside that novel figuring it out. A couple weeks were spent reading printouts till that got in the way of just thinking. I’d stop and write notes whenever ideas hit. Downtime in the library. Its said its the best job ever if there were more money.
Building the hammer and cycle I clung to the concept continuity is everything. I’d wondered to Jay how writers keep up remembering everything? My method was re-reading from the beginning and then starting over after reaching the end. Except once, when something critical was figured out, I went back five chapters. I wrote what the book told me to feel. Where re-reading is writing and growth from original ideas. I began every morning a few paragraphs or idea before where I finished yesterday to make sure of where I was. An idea never went from a scribbled note directly in the book. Ideas were stored for when re-reading that section of the book.
Then during one of our visits up the river with Jay and Lynne Gissen’s family, I referred to the novel for the last time without Jay saying, “I’m tired of hearing about it. Show me something. Or don’t mention it again. … ”
There were one hundred pages Jay said could be a novella when we convened for the evening review in his RIOT Magazine’s West 38th Street office between Seventh and Eighth. In retrospect I guessed he was ribbing me by repeating novella as it did bother me hearing it. There were notes and the story was gone over meticulously. He told me what he couldn’t believe happened without more characterization. How the voices of other narrators weren’t much different from Hank’s. Tools to wonder with. Finishing the discussion he said to stretch and not constrain myself. Keeping things straight and not all over the place had made some writing tame. Truly those hours and friendship and vast advice, are more important to me than satisfying Malcolm Forbes’ intent to provide the novel with an editor.
A couple years later anticipating the overwritten manuscript would round out, I delivered a draft to The Wylie Agency and six months later received their rejection letter. The next draft I tried again and the desk guy knew they didn’t accept unsoliciteds, but took it after exacting an animated discussion. So after that one’s rejection and the next draft was done, I waited for Mr. Wylie in front of his office building one morning in the Spring of 2009. To verify if he knew who the office rejected, plus symbolically conclude my pursuit of “the biggest agent in the business” for the novel.
Mr. Wylie walked to the entrance from my left and went through the door past the one I held open for him. This is it I thought and there was enough momentum to carry through with it. After that beat I followed quickly and said, “Excuse me, Mr. Wylie.” He stopped and turned, nodding off Building Security, and I stepped over introducing myself with my name and hammer and cycle author not wanting to take up too much of his time. He’d kept his hand held out and I looked down again making sure and shook it.
Our conversation waded through things and even hit on his having heard I expected him to represent the book when I knew better and really was just there for the symbolism no one has to care about but me. Mr. Wylie launched his career going to Big Sur to personally lure Henry Miller to change agents and I. F. Stone in the Congressional lunchroom. So it was just natural the novel deserved that much respect from me.
Mr. Wylie asked and I told him I didn’t want to explain my personal reasons for agency loyalty. They meant something encouraging to me that I didn’t want lessened by his admission he hadn’t had a clue. He even uncovered that I’d actually handed a lost early manuscript to David Brown because he was Helen Gurley Brown’s husband who made films and movies.
Mr. Wylie asked about my name because the author Charles Frazier was stamped on the public’s consciousness. I said I couldn’t change my name because of what it meant to me since childhood in Charles M.’s similarity to Malcolm X. Mr. Wylie said, “You should keep your name.” He asked questions to see how aware I was of the Internet. And said, “Now you’ll become an expert finding an agent.”
I queried every agent I found and missed one in the first round because of their single elevator and they were on the top, 12th floor. Peter McGuigan had ridden in Washington D.C. and sent me D. McGillivray’s Reader’s Notes that made an advantageous checklist. So as Kristen Nelson of Denver advises in her overview of acquiring an agent, the business is so fickle it’s not necessary to be loyal or have expectations from receiving an agency’s reader’s notes. But the novel’s failure to be represented was a victory. Because while publishing profits from popularized culture, I’m satisfied its the novelists’ heritage to pierce the façades.
In conclusion. Never giving up on The Hammer and Cycle Messenger Service was a privilege and Kaleidoscopic Cold War View. http://www.hammerandcyclemessengerservice.com
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