Big Kid Rollercoaster is coming in 2025!

Preface Or Prologue Or Introduction

I don’t know about you or you or you, but I don’t typically read the prefaces to books.

Prefaces or prologues or introductions or whatever else they want to call them, makes no difference to me. I usually flip right past them (thwip, thwip, thwip, my best approximation of the sound made when pages are quickly turned, perhaps you can do better), figuring that if the author had something meaningful to say, something that would get your blood pumping or cause you to furrow your brow the way people do when they want to convey that they’re deep in thought, it would be in the text of the book itself, not in the preface or prologue or introduction or whatever, which is not an altogether unfair opinion, you must admit. But maybe you read them. Maybe you’re different than me. If you’re reading this sentence, it seems that you are. Good for you.

From time to time over the course of many years, both productive and unproductive, as a hacky writer of mostly obscure novels whose titles you probably wouldn’t recognize (and even more obscure short stories published in periodicals with quaint little names like The Milkweed Literary Review that an over-educated farmhand presumably dreamed up in the middle of the night after too much chili and whiskey), people have asked me which of my books was my favorite. They’ve lobbed that question in my direction at parties and in interviews, and I could usually tell by their exaggerated facial expressions or the way their voices took on a certain inauthentic cheeriness that it was an inquiry they made of all authors, celebrated and uncelebrated, and that they expected me to equivocate or repeat the identical response they’d likely received from other, better, more celebrated writers, that their books are like their children for god sakes, picking one over another would be a Sophie’s choice for god sakes, how could possibly you expect a writer to choose one?

I’ve heard writers provide that same response over and over myself.

Here’s what I have to say about that: What a pile of self-congratulatory horseshit. (Kindly excuse me if a word like “horseshit” troubles you. Worse is yet to come. Like “fuck” and “fucking” and “motherfucking.” And “screwdriver.”)

All writers I know do in fact have a favorite book they wrote, for one reason or another. Maybe it was the first thing the author ever had published after years and years of form rejection letters. Maybe the book was based on the events of a cherished summer spent with their grandparents in some beach town before it was terrorized by a giant, thousand-toothed shark or a madman with a meat cleaver and salad tongs (you’ll have to read the book to find out what the tongs were used for!). Maybe it’s because the book was generously reviewed in The New York Times, which gave the author’s life meaning that it had always lacked before. Maybe the publisher sent the author on an all-expense-paid book tour and the author got laid left, right and sideways in Minneapolis and Kansas City and Austin, Texas, which is just as noteworthy as a one-column New York Times review mid-week, but not quite as noteworthy as one of the full-page reviews on Sunday that your mother can show to her friends in the senior community the next time one of them brags about how her son is a heart surgeon. There’s always a different reason why authors’ favorite books are their favorites. And shutting up a heart surgeon’s mom is more common than you might think unless you’ve actually met one of those heartless heart-surgeon mothers.

Not incidentally, despite what authors say and say and say at cocktail parties and in interviews, their books are nothing at all like children. Nothing. Their books don’t breathe, or shit on the new ottoman, or break your favorite wine glasses, or forget their lines in the school play, or kiss you good night, or make you illustrated cards for your birthday that suggest they believe your head is the exact same size as the sun in the drawing on the front. (Note to other writers: if you truly believe in your tiny heart of hearts that your books bring you as much pleasure as your children do, either you are a colossal jerk or your children really really really suck. And if your children really really really suck, it could be because you are a colossal jerk. Nature or nurture, it all comes back to you.)

Back to my point, which was that all authors have a favorite book they wrote.

Ask Philip Roth to make a Sophie’s choice from among his many books, and I’m willing to bet he’d pick Goodbye, Columbus. (Of course, you can’t ask him because he is no longer among the living, but still.)

Ask William Styron to make a Sophie’s choice from among his writings, and he would certainly select Sophie’s Choice. (You saw that coming from a mile away. You’re a smart cookie.)

Emily Bronte? Wuthering Heights.

George Eliot? Silas Marner. (Even she had to know that Middlemarch was essentially unreadable, right? There isn’t a high school honors English student, past or present, who would disagree with that assessment.)

Ask me which of my books is my favorite, which of my obscure and hacky hackjobs, and I will always always always say it is a supposedly clever and profound novel I wrote a good number of years ago, packed with footnotes and unearned wisdom, called You Poor Monster. (Published by a now-defunct literary publishing house out of San Francisco named MacAdam Cage, which went belly up when the publisher died shortly after being diagnosed with cancer. He was a charming, handsome man with perfect gray hair that flopped to one side in a way that told you he went to prep school and that it was 50-50 he still had a lacrosse stick somewhere in his garage. You could tell that life had been easy for him. Until the cancer grabbed ahold of him, of course, then it got hard as fuck really quickly. Here’s a story: after the success of one of my books, I negotiated a multi-book deal with that man whereby I would receive an enormous bonus if I ever won the heavyweight boxing championship of the world. I insisted on including the provision because winning the heavyweight championship seemed just as likely as the term he had first proposed whereby I would receive a significant bonus if one of my books became a national bestseller. The provision I insisted on has been my excuse for eating more than I should. After all, I would get nothing if I won the middleweight championship.)

Why is that novel my favorite? That’s easy. Because I proposed to my beautiful, dark-haired, gray-eyed wife (now ex-wife) with that book on her birthday. At a little Chinese restaurant in downtown Los Angeles that made excellent orange chicken (Wokcano, closed now), I handed her a hole-punched copy of the manuscript and asked her to turn to the dedication page where it read, “To my wife” in italicized letters like the dedication in this book. She responded, “I didn’t know you were married.” Funny woman. Then she started crying like she’d bit the tip of her tongue. Technically speaking, I’m not sure I ever asked her to marry me, and, just as technically speaking, I’m not sure she ever said yes. Nevertheless, we got married anyway later that year in front of our friends and family (but not my father) and maybe God, if you believe in God (some days I do, some days I don’t) and believe He had nothing better to do on a Saturday evening in November. And little more than a year and a half after we were wed, with my beautiful, dark-haired, gray-eyed wife (now ex-wife) yelling, “I can’t feel my legs! I can’t feel my legs!” after her epidural had done its job, our daughter was born. I was the first person she ever saw on this earth. She cried when she saw me; you would understand if you know what I look like. Ten dollars says they didn’t slap my photo on the back jacket of this book; if you were wondering why, that’s why.

And I love that little girl (now teenaged girl) more than any book I have ever written or ever will write. If I had written Moby Dick or To Kill a Mockingbird or some other novel that you adore, I would still love that little girl (now teenaged girl) more than Moby Dick or To Kill a Mockingbird or whatever book you are thinking of at this moment. If you connect the dots, one to the next, my daughter might not be here but for the book I gave her mother when I proposed. So, you see.

Now, if I can be candid with you about which of my silly books was my favorite, which took no skin off my nose, I can be just as candid about which one is my least favorite.

This one.

This one, by a country mile, as they used to say back when countries apparently were measured by the mile.

Why is it my least favorite?   

Because my older sister dies in this motherfucking book (I warned you), a fact about which you probably learned from the dust jacket before you even reached this preface or prologue or introduction or whatever they’re calling this section that I’m writing and you’re reading. The summary on the dust jacket probably reads something like this: “The author, a fancy, self-important, fat-faced attorney and little-known novelist, tries to come to grips with the death of his older sister many years after a childhood accident nearly claimed both of their lives.”

Yes, my older sister dies in this book.

“Dies” in the present tense because you haven’t read it yet.

“Died” in the past tense because it happened six years ago.

That’s why this is my least favorite book of mine, because every time I re-read it or edit it she dies again, in the present tense. Over and over and over. You can’t stop it. I didn’t stop it.

That’s just one reason why this book is my least favorite. That, and because this book was the beginning of the end of the marriage that started in a little Chinese restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, which is only the slightest of exaggerations. Oh, well.

When you write fiction, as I normally do when I am not being a fancy, self-important, fat-faced lawyer, you can write whatever the hell you want. You can create virtually anything, like I did when I dreamed up The Milkweed Literary Review out of the sweet blue air several pages back (and if it sounds like the name of a very real literary magazine with a readership that could fit in the back of a minivan, then I did my job). And while readers may hate whatever you write as much as every high school student in the history of America detests Middlemarch, no one questions its accuracy precisely because it’s labeled fiction. You can make a character’s eyes whatever color you want, blue or green or blue-green even, and no one says a peep about accuracy. You can make up anything and everything. Maybe that’s why some fiction writers, like surgeons and lawyers and movie stars, believe they are God, if you believe in such things (some days I do, some days I don’t).

When you write non-fiction, as I have done every working day as a lawyer for more than thirty years (legal briefs, motions, letters to other lawyers where I strain not to call them douchebags even though they are douchebags, take my word), and as I have done on a few occasions in some slim sports books that you can find on the Internet or in a used book store if your town still has one, everyone questions the accuracy of everything on the page, as they should. My beautiful, dark-haired, gray-eyed wife (now ex-wife) questioned the accuracy of what I had started to write about my older sister, questioned the accuracy of events that had occurred a lifetime before she’d ever even met me, and questioned why I was writing any of this down at all, as she was entitled to do. To paraphrase (and to remove a few unflattering comments), she thought I was trying to portray myself as a hero who tried to save my sister from dying in the end. But she had it entirely backwards. I’ll save you from reading the rest of the book if you’d like so you can return it to the bookstore for a refund (or the library so you can check out Sophie’s Choice): I’m the villain who didn’t try hard enough.

Oh, and when I first began writing (and typing) this story, my beautiful, dark-haired, gray-eyed wife (now ex-wife) also thought that, little by little, I was losing my marbles, as they used to say when people collected marbles (and apparently kept losing them). She thought that I was cracking up, as they also used to say. I put this book aside for years to prove I wasn’t cracking up. Then, after our split, I restarted it, perhaps to prove that I am always cracking up.

Many have articulated this better than I, but writing non-fiction, a memoir or autobiography in particular, is an exercise of memory and calls into question just how much memory can be trusted. I trust my memory about some things (example: my daughter’s birthdate, which is April 12, 2006). I don’t trust it about others (example: the name of my daughter’s preschool teacher, an older woman with sheets of long white hair who may or may not have answered to “Teacher Chris”). And as I grow older, I can only imagine that my memory will deteriorate the way a newspaper grows yellow then turns to dust in your fingers when you try to pick it up. So if I am ever going to write about a fancy, self-important, fat-faced attorney and little-known novelist who tries to come to grips with the death of his older sister many years after a childhood accident nearly claimed both of their lives, it’s probably best that I do so now. If I wait and my memory fades the way I expect it will, I could end up remembering no more than this: “We were in an accident. Years later she died. The accident fucked me up. Her death fucked me up more.” Twenty words. Eighteen if an editor removes the curses. (Note to the editor: Please don’t remove the curses.)

Other than changing a few names for reasons not worth discussing here, I intend that whatever I put in this little book will be as accurate as it could possibly be based upon my memory. Please keep that caveat in mind: It is based upon my memory. I will try not to add flourishes and humdrum details that would surely make this a better written book but in fact are unremembered – the color of someone’s shirt, the precise time of day something occurred, whether a hummingbird was humming in the background, etc., etc. And I will try as best I can to identify those occasions when I don’t trust my own memory or, at least, when I question its accuracy.

To the best of my abilities, I will try to be candid. But candor and accuracy are two entirely different concepts. They are, at best, cousins, and perhaps not even the kissing kind.

And in that spirit, of being both accurate and candid, I must tell you that I’ve already fudged the truth a bit, and not just with The Milkweed Literary Review. I fudged it before you even opened this book.

The title I’ve given this book – Big Kid Rollercoaster – isn’t entirely accurate.

It should be Big Girl Rollercoaster.

The title, as you will learn later should you choose to read on (I hope you do, but you have free will), comes from something my daughter and I used to say to each other when she was little and funny and looked forward to going to preschool with Teacher Chris (or perhaps Teacher Kim).

“Baby rollercoaster?” I would say.

“Big girl rollercoaster!” the child I love more than any book would respond.

That expression will make more sense later. At least I hope it will.

So, if I were being accurate and honest, this little book you are holding, my least favorite of my books, should really be called Big Girl Rollercoaster.

It’s just that Big Kid Rollercoaster feels like a better title for a book written by a fat old man. That’s who I am today. A fat old man.

But please remember that I have to keep my weight up in case I ever get a shot at the heavyweight title. As for being old, I have no more control over the passage of time than you or you or you.