A portrait of the artist in 1986 finds him at Woods Gramercy, an upscale restaurant in what the New York Times is calling “the year of the column in restaurant decoration,” and it’s just about the only restaurant right now that’s trying to make a name for itself with vegetables, of all things; in fact the “Steamed Vegetables” is among the most talked-about dishes on its menu and the most affordable (always a good sign) . . .
Everybody knows Donte Carmello’s a criminal. But the crime’s not interesting. The reason he makes papers is he’s mysterious. Gray fedora with a black or white velvet band. Big scar up his cheek and over the brow. Driven day and night on these long slow laps around the city. Sitting in the back with a skinny brown cigar, misted by smoke, and his car’s got this dull bloated glide to it on account of there’s armor plating in the doors. Two thousand pounds.
Alan Moore is 72 years old now. Since the 1980s, he’s been celebrated as the greatest writer in comics history. But he’s done with all that. Full-time novelist now. Finally. Spends his days at home just writing, reading, and smoking “frightening,” “staggering,” “saturating” amounts of weed.“ I use it to work,” as he told Alex Musson. “Always have done.” Except these days he does it without the weekly deadlines, the phone always ringing, questions and chitchat with illustrators, coauthors, publishers, press — none of it. Life of a novelist now. Solitude.
Mark Z. Danielewski started outlining his third novel in 2006 and these were its major characteristics: The novel would be 27 volumes long (the number is important). Each volume would have 880 pages (also important). By releasing roughly two volumes a year, for a dozen years, it would serialize the story of nine central characters converging in Los Angeles around a few central mysteries. It’d be sprawling and brainy and challenging like his first two novels except this time he’d be doubling down on narrative. He wanted to make something propulsive. Almost addictive. Like a TV series! The sort of prestige show that seemed to be blowing up into something of a phenomenon at the time, 2006-08ish.
A few years ago, the novelist William T. Vollmann was diagnosed with colon cancer. The prognosis wasn’t great but he went ahead with the treatment. A length of intestine drawn out and snipped. It was awful but it worked. The cancer went into remission. Then his daughter died. Then he got dropped by his publisher. Then he got hit by a car. Then he got a pulmonary embolism. But things are looking up. William T. Vollmann spent “twelve or fifteen years” researching and writing a novel about the CIA called A Table for Fortune; as of this writing it has a few back-channel blurbs from editors and assistants who’ve caught glimpses and say it might be his masterpiece, or at the very least a new sort of achievement for him.