Barry Crimmins is a former Air America Radio writer and
correspondent, noted political satirist and author of the critically acclaimed
Seven Stories Press book Never Shake Hands With A War Criminal. He helped bring the Boston Comedy scene into the
modern age when he founded two of Boston's most fabled clubs: The Ding Ho and
Stitches. Such acts as Steven Wright, Paula Poundstone, Bobcat Goldthwait,
Kevin Meaney, Jimmy Tingle and many others cut their comedic teeth in the rooms
Crimmins started and at shows he produced. In the interest of full disclosure, Barry is also
my cousin.
Tell me about your latest
work.
I’m
not talking about my latest work because it is barely begun.
Or whatever you want to
talk about.
I’ve
had a book published. It’s a book of essays. So I’m sort of a cheater as an
author because I just write things in chunks as they come to me. Although, if
you read the whole book, it ties together a bit.
It’s
called Never Shake Hands With a War
Criminal, which is based on an incident at CNN when I was there to be
interviewed and Henry Kissinger came in. A long story short, Kissinger offered
me his hand. “I’m Henry Kissinger…” and he started bubbling like a Satanic
water cooler, that idling Kissinger thing he does, “er, er, er,”… just waiting
to make an arms deal or something.
And
I just looked at him and said, “UGH” And I left, and they brought in a lot of
security and all these people were all upset.
When
I came back, Norma Quarles, CNN anchor at the time, said, “Why didn’t you want
to shake hands with Dr. Kissinger?”
And
I said, “Because I have a strict policy of never shaking hands with war
criminals.”
And
she said, “Oh, that’s right, I forgot.” Which I thought was the funniest part
of the whole thing because she really was sucking up to him before then.
But
anyway, that’s a bunch of essays from a while ago. And I continue to write
essays, and maybe some more will get collected at some point. Maybe I’ll get
collected enough to write an actual longer narrative of some sort. But I don’t
know if I have that kind of discipline or if that’s what I’m supposed to be
doing. But I enjoy writing essays more than anything.
I
also have enjoyed over the years writing my act to perform live. That’s what
led people at the Boston Phoenix to
ask me to write some political essays for them, going back twenty-five or so
years. And I had the great good fortune of being edited by a true journalistic
Renaissance man, Clif Garboden, who was there at the alternative press
revolution in the 60’s. Tremendous photographer, tremendous writer, tremendous
reporter, and just the best editor ever. He taught me to write by editing my
work. Never was critical. I would tell him, “Look, you can tell me I’m awful.
That’s fine. I’m a nightclub guy.” And he said, “No, this it great. It has
something to it that we’re just not getting, but we did move this here…” And
after a while (it didn’t take too long), I learned what he was looking for. And
I agreed with what he was looking for, and I learned to write from that. So
that’s a great advantage I had as a writer was to have a great editor. And Clif
Garboden was great.
He
passed away nearly two years ago. And that, I guess, is part of why I’m not
talking about what I’m writing. Right now, what I’m thinking about and working
on and taking some notes on (I don’t know if I’ll try to put it anywhere or
not), but I’ve just been dealing with grief a lot because an awful lot of my
friends have been passing away. And a lot of the people with whom I speak when
I was working on something – people I could actually take into confidence and
say I’m doing this or that have passed on. I don’t believe in talking to most
people about what I’m working on because most stuff doesn’t end up happening
(for me anyway). I don’t know about everybody else, but if one percent of all
the books I ever hear people tell me they were writing happened, that would be
a lot. So I figure I shouldn’t be wasting anybody else’s time with that stuff
either. But there are people who are old and dear and artistic allies you can
go to.
I’ve
lost a couple -- Clif Garboden and Bill Morrissey, the folk singer/novelist was
someone else I could speak with. We actually – he’s gone now; it’s never going
to happen – but we were talking about both writing novels where we would call
each other. My characters would call Bill’s characters in the middle of the
novels, and not make anything more of it, but to see if anyone would ever
notice. Three or four times in a novel, you’d get these phone calls from
another novel. We never did it, but we laughed real hard about it, and that’s
enough. Some of the stuff you just keep for yourself. You don’t put everything into
the word zoo. You can’t be too miserly. Some of it has to be offered as
incense.
What are your biggest
obstacles?
I
think with me, as with any writer, it’s me. It’s all about getting out of your
own way. And then getting under way.
It
recently took me a year to get around to painting the upstairs bathroom. And
while I was doing it, I realized that I know what to avoid. It’s hard work.
It’s a small bathroom. It’s got a million angles in it. There’s wood next to
everywhere you have to paint. It’s just a hassle. I know how to paint. That’s
one thing I know how to do. I can fall back on it, if I had to. But this is
like a trapezoid next to a triangle next to a parallelogram – it’s insane.
I
think writing is like that bathroom. I think what I have to write soon is going
to be complicated and hard because I’m getting to that point where –I’m 59
years old – if I put in this effort, if I take into account what Vonnegut and
Twain said, and some others, you start losing it pretty soon. So I would like
to do something that matters. So
that’s both daunting and pretentious.
What
I want to write about is grief and what to do with it.
And
I also have no qualms about writing sentimental things. Maybe it’s my Irish
heritage. Sentiment takes a bad rap in a lot of literary criticism. “Oh, that’s
too sentimental.” Well, fine. I’m a sentimental person, and life, people,
things, dogs, you name it, baseball teams – they’re very dear to me. And that’s
what I know how to do. Be loyal and sometimes have enough guts to care about
things, and writing about people who are like that – I think that’s okay. So I
think I’m going to write a sentimental book about grief, if I get around to
doing exactly what I want to do. And
some of the grief is just grieving the loss of time. I spent so many years
writing about and discussing American electoral politics. That was like a
treadmill to nowhere. So I’m really trying to pick my spots. Right now I’m just
taking notes, and who knows? Maybe just the notes will be found someday.
I
know I’m no Twain, but I get as much out of reading his notebooks as anything. Just watching him put it
together, and I get this little shot in the arm. I’m reading Twain… “I think
I’m opposed to capital punishment.” That’s all. That’s all he writes down. And
then, wow! You see him wrestling with some things and you think, “Wow, I’m
wrestling with some things.” He was opposed to that then; you would have a hard time nowadays. He’s still ahead of us.
So,
now that the bathroom’s painted, I guess I could start writing about grief.
Do you have any
productivity tips?
If
you can get deadlines, that’s really productive. If you want to be productive,
become a working writer. I’m quite productive with a deadline. I don’t wait
till the last minute. If I know a deadline’s coming up, I get it done before
the deadline because I know what can happen near the deadline.
But,
without the deadline, I can become less focused. And I’ve been less focused
lately. So, you can try to find a real gig, at least for a while, where you have to deliver, that’s good.
For
years, people would come to see my act, and, whatever happened in the news that
day, people would expect me to have something about it. That’s an immediate
deadline. Not only do I need to talk about what’s going on right now, but I
have to be funny about it. I lived under that deadline year after year, and
also -- Oh, I’m Seattle today, and the mayor said… -- and I’d have a little
joke about that. That makes the audience know that I know where I am and who
they are and what’s going on. So I had a life of those little deadlines, and it
kept me quite productive for a long time.
I
don’t know now if I’m not getting a little punched out. But I’ve gotten a lot
of stuff down. There’s a big trail out there, and I hope it does some people
some good. Whether or not I’m around to take any bows for it. But that’s
probably better, if you’re not around, because all the crap’s out of the way.
My
philosophy sort of came from my hero Twain – reading him and his notebooks and
so on. And getting into that sort of source material of other people [tells you
to] play to the ages, not the age. You never know who’s going to find whatever
you do. If you do one thing that’s of value, and people know about it, there’s
a good chance that a few people are going to come back and comb through
everything.
I
try to write stuff that won’t make me look like a jerk in a hundred years. And
if you think about things that way you might notice current stupidity a little
better.
Why
that’s a productivity tip, I don’t know. (I actually had a thing in my head
where I could have bridged it and made the ship stand up in the bottle, but it
was a lie.) Anyway, good luck to anyone who is writing. If you do well, we
could all benefit from it sooner or later, if only through our descendents.
