The Pint Man
- January 26th, 2010
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Welcome to the new SteveRushin.com, with its book-flogging home page alerting visitors to the imminent arrival of The Pint Man, my first novel, to be published by Doubleday on February 23, 2010. That’s an auspicious date in the publishing industry: Johannes Gutenberg published his first Bible on February 23, 1455. I’d be pleased if The Pint Man sold even half as well.
As for the site itself: I’m not entirely sure what that “Rushin Media” window portends, but it looks ominous, doesn’t it — the rabbit-eared logo of some ’50s multinational. Perhaps I will post video there, if I can figure out how to do that.
In the coming days and weeks I’ll be writing more frequently on the site, and adding my first several appearances for The Pint Man to the News link. Incidentally, the photo on the News link – the one evidently taken through a keyhole of the manager’s office in a Barnes & Noble in St. Paul, Minnesota — is of me meeting my earliest literary hero: Jack Klugman, a.k.a. New York Herald sportswriter Oscar Madison, whose influence can be seen to this day in my wardrobe.
Love the new look. Looks great! Sent you an email today catching up. Congrats on the new book. I can’t wait to read it. Hope everything is going well and look forward to hearing from you soon Steve.
Wondering if you worked in “The Workman’s Friend”, the great Guinness poem of Flann O’Brien (nee Brian O’Nolan and Myles na gCopaleen) in “At Swim-Two-Birds”:
When things go wrong and will not come right,
Though you do the best you can,
When life looks black as the hour of night -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.
When money’s tight and hard to get
And your horse has also ran,
When all you have is a heap of debt -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.
When health is bad and your heart feels strange,
And your face is pale and wan,
When doctors say you need a change,
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.
When food is scarce and your larder bare
And no rashers grease your pan,
When hunger grows as your meals are rare -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.
In time of trouble and lousey strife,
You have still got a darlint plan
You still can turn to a brighter life -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.
Ogar: The Workman’s Friend is not invoked in The Pint Man, though I do love it and much else from Flann O’Brien.
My grasp of what he wrote and meant
Was only five or six %.
The rest was only words and sound –
My reference is to Ezra £.
–Flann O’Brien, “Literary Criticism”
Or this:
As a beauty I am not a star.
There are others more handsome by far.
But my face I don’t mind it
For I am behind it.
It’s the people in front get the jar.
Congrats on the new site. I see you caved to Doubleday on all the fancy graphics, but kudos for drawing the line at the NASA t-shirt. Still, I can’t help but mourn the passing of all the past comments: the academic ruminations on Eight is Enough, the shotgun marriage of Who’s on First and Was (Not Was), the unholy intersection of Broadway musicals and baseball monikers. While I wait for that pain to pass (OK, it already has), the occasion seems to call for an anagramical toast. So Lift Your Pint to Futility Porn (that didn’t come out right; anagrams are hard).
Seriously, can’t wait to read the book.