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Drops of blood

BEG, BORROW, STEAL:
A Writer’s Life
By Michael Greenberg
240 pp. Other $19.95

Reviewed by Ruth Douillette

So you want to be a writer? Be careful what you wish for. What appears to be a glamorous way to make a living actually requires a stolid daily grind, a determination of the blood, sweat, and tears variety. Or in Michael Greenberg’s case, the beg, borrow, and steal kind.

Notable for his award-winning 2008 memoir Hurry Down Sunshine, in which he chronicles his daughter’s sudden “crack-up”—she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at fifteen—Greenberg is a columnist for the Times Literary Supplement of London.

With a memoir and novels to his credit, the essay is his forte. His expertise is getting in, making his point, and getting out, leaving the reader to absorb and internalize a truth, personal to Greenberg, but rendered universal under his skillful pen.

What Greenberg delivers in Beg, Borrow, Steal is forty-four chronologically arranged memories around which he reconstructs a verbal snapshot using the thousand words, give or take, that we deem a picture’s worth. It’s a little like flipping the pages of a photo album as we move with Greenberg through the lean, mean early years when he supplemented a scanty, sometimes nonexistent, writing income by peddling cosmetics on the streets of New York City, chauffeuring “wealthy schoolchildren,” sorting mail on the graveyard shift, or moving furniture, with the deeply ingrained intent to avoid “the psychological rut of ‘working for the man.’”

“Remember what I’m saying, Michael,” his grandfather Louie had admonished him. “More important than what you do for a living is who you do it for. Are you slaving for another man’s fortune? Or can you hold your head up and call yourself your own boss?”

Greenberg’s rocky relationship with his father comes to blows when he spurns the family scrap-metal business and leaves home at fifteen with his father’s words ringing loudly: “Which do you think is worth more, a commodity or some goddamn idea? You’re scribbling won’t get you on the subway.”

A challenge? Perhaps.

Begging for work, borrowing from conversations overheard, stealing pieces of people by telling their stories: all these are (or were—the begging is over) part of Greenberg’s writing experience.

Greenberg’s editor told him to spill a drop of blood in each essay. He does, but thankfully doesn’t bleed all over the pages. Greenberg regulates his writing as he does his life. One gets the sense that even in the midst of wrenching turmoil, he has his pen and pad in hand, jotting phrases and observations even while blood spills. He lives his life and observes it simultaneously.

All the world’s a stage for Greenberg, and most especially his beloved New York City, the setting for these essays. He is not the sole actor, or even the major one, however, which is what keeps these essays out of the dreaded (to some) navel-gazing category. Greenberg is introspective, certainly, but his gaze is as much outward, maybe more so, than inward. He steals the stories of others, and in telling them reveals himself.

The book’s theme is writing, but the topics that tie it together are eclectic: a visit to a pre-Revolutionary African cemetery, a ride on a subway with a “strong-smelling homeless woman,” a reunion with an old friend from Hebrew school, renting his apartment on Craigslist, a midnight excursion in Central Park to see screech owls, his dachshund Eli with the “disgraceful domed head [and] a propensity to be overweight.” All are stamped with Greenberg’s style: keen observation, painful honesty, wry humor, and a hint of self-deprecation.

Greenberg’s use of dialogue is exquisitely authentic. Perhaps “The Importance of Pronouns” shows why. Greenberg describes the day he arrived home to find his wife and her new recently transgendered friend, Georgina, chatting in the living room. Much to his wife Pat’s embarrassment, he intrudes on their conversation, going so far as to pull out a pen and paper and begin asking questions.

When Pat angrily orders him to put the pen away, Greenberg replies, “I just want to get his language right.”

“Her language. Pronouns are very important,” Georgina instructs him.

We’re treated to the rest of the conversation and the angry words between husband and wife after Georgina leaves—an exquisitely authentic sounding marital spat. One wonder’s that Pat doesn’t snap all his pencils in half.

The book could be loosely termed a memoir; Greenberg cruises down life’s river, dropping anchor at various points along the way to document moments along life’s continuum. We sail along with him, aware that there is an awful lot of water over the dam that goes unrecorded, for this book anyway.

As with any book of essays, one wonders if it would have been published were a lesser-known author at the helm. Probably not, given the way the publishing world works—bad news for writers with equal talent but less notoriety. But writers who strive for what Greenberg has accomplished will enjoy the read, as will readers who like short, poignant essays, and those curious about the writerly life, New Yorkers in general, and given the eclectic nature of the essays, pretty much anybody.

Beg, Borrow, Steal is about life. It’s about writing. Life is writing for Greenberg. Or maybe, writing is life. Either way. Greenberg the man and Greenberg the writer are inseparable.

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Ruth Douillette retired after 35 years as a middle school teacher, and now freelances as a writer and photographer. Her essays have been published in the Christian Science Monitor, Cup of Comfort, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and Under Our Skin, an anthology about breast cancer. Her photography has been featured in flashquake's gallery of art. Ruth is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. For a sample of her writing and photography, visit Upstream and Down~.

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