With an oeuvre of hifalutin and incredibly literary novels, I’m often mistaken for an intellectual. Did I go to Harvard? Yes, but only in a physical sense as my mind was already drifting to the sprawling cornfields of Northern Illinois where my debut tome, Barb City Blues, would take place. While critics and readers alike view my work as pretentious, often noting that I parrot those below the poverty line for my own personal gain, I’m really just a humble orator, providing a voice to the voiceless. So to all those who think of me as just some punky trust fund kid masquerading as a working-class writer, I have one simple question: Have you not seen the denim work shirt that I’m wearing in my author’s photo?
Whenever the sincerity of my work is doubted, I always point to my author’s photo as evidence of a life lived. Inside the back cover of all four of my published works, you’ll find me donning an extremely unbreathable blue denim shirt, incredibly scuffed-up boots, and the messiest bedhead you’ve ever seen in your life, all three serving as indicators of my unwavering authenticity.
Sure, the critics will bring up my time at Harvard and use that as a knock against my “working man” status, but in truth, I never fit in on that campus, studying in all those buildings that were named after my grandfather. All of my academic achievements at Harvard are best viewed as means to an end, evidence of me working harder and faster so that I could get out and experience more of the world.
That’s not to say the experience was an entire waste. It was during my final semester at Harvard that I visited a friend’s beach house on Martha’s Vineyard, and while walking through the sprawling mass of a house, I saw a beach ball hauntingly floating in his Olympic-sized pool. It was there that my second book Mama Died Today was born—a book that The New Yorker claimed was like “if gentrification were a book.” Which is a really strange claim considering the fact that in my author’s photo, I’m holding a small sign that says “Gentrification Sux.” Must be that critic didn’t make it all the way to the end.
Yes, I’m often tagged with the title of Blue Blood because of my upbringing, but in actuality, with my blue denim work shirt, I’m more indicative of a guy tasked with killing massive rats in a Stephen King short story. Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if people even take the time to look at my author’s photos before labeling me as “out of touch” (NPR) and “disconnected from the reality that most of us live in” (The Boston Globe). When the reviews of my third book Bad Days in Hennessey County‘ came out, it felt as though people were going out of their way to ignore the fact that tucked within the back cover was a photo of me wearing a denim work shirt with visible stains on it, while standing in the middle of a dumpster, holding the aforementioned “Gentrification Sux” sign in one hand and an orphaned baby in the other.
When you have a father who is one of the best-selling authors of all time and a mother who runs one of the most well-known publishing houses in the world, there are always going to be claims of nepotism. But I assure you nothing has been handed to me, despite The New York Times ascertaining that, “After reading that prolonged laundry scene, I’m not sure the writer knows how to actually wash clothes,” when reviewing my fourth novel Ain’t She A Beauty. All of these criticisms and potshots are unnecessary as I, of course, definitely know how clothes are washed: You take them to the dry cleaner.
Which is exactly what I did to my denim shirt in my author’s photo after I rubbed copious amounts of shoe polish on it for my author’s photo. Also the orphaned baby I was holding had an accident on the shirt as well. There’s no way I could have gotten those stains out myself.
If a picture is worth a thousand words then the thousand words that are best associated with my author’s photo would be “working class, salt of the earth, blue-collar guy who knows about hardships.” The other 987 words would say something similar.
Yes, I was born rich, had familial connections, and have never drank tap water in my life, but I assure you that I’m just an average, run-of-the-mill-man-of-people as evidenced from the denim work shirt in my author’s photo.