About Perpetuating Trouble

Dear Read­er … have you ever wished you could earn a liv­ing by mak­ing stuff up? Have you ever fan­ta­sized about liv­ing the life of a writer? If so, Per­pet­u­at­ing Trou­ble is the humor­ous cau­tion­ary tale you need to read.

“I avoid­ed writ­ers very care­ful­ly because they can per­pet­u­ate trou­ble as no one else can,” wrote F. Scott Fitzger­ald. In this mem­oir, nov­el­ist Chris Orcutt shows how true this is.

Debunk­ing the myths, Orcutt reveals that the writ­ing life is real­ly one of crush­ing soli­tude, chron­ic dis­sat­is­fac­tion, mood swings and self-doubt, and where suc­cess­es, when they come, are like din­er mints—sweet, but short-lived. And every­day life is equal­ly stress­ful, with cal­lous urol­o­gists, cur­mud­geon­ly painters, flir­ta­tious recep­tion­ists, per­son­al feuds and pet­ty thefts. For the writer, all of this leads to one thing—perpetual trou­ble.

Yet, Orcut­t’s deep love of lan­guage, his saint­ly wife, and his indomitable sense of humor keep him going. Whether pick­ing up two female hitch­hik­ers who lat­er turn out to be aliens from anoth­er plan­et, or divest­ing him­self of a hoard of tacky paint­ings, or using phi­los­o­phy to get out of a traf­fic tick­et, Orcutt finds the humor and the art in his tri­als. It’s also a life of love and sad­ness, as he recounts a whirl­wind love affair with a rav­ish­ing red­head, and the death of his beloved writ­ing com­pan­ion, his cat.

In the end, Orcutt dis­cov­ers that to be a writer, he must be part adven­tur­er, cru­sad­er, humorist, lover, philoso­pher, and, of course, trou­ble­mak­er.

Per­pet­u­at­ing Trou­ble is Orcut­t’s tenth book, and by far his most per­son­al work to date.

Buy: Ama­zon

 

Excerpt from Perpetuating Trouble

I can’t speak for all blocked writ­ers, but when I’m blocked, I seek out con­flict with peo­ple and insti­tu­tions, and I chan­nel my cre­ative ten­sion into dis­trac­tions, rais­ing my pro­cras­ti­na­tion from writ­ing to a rar­i­fied art form. Over the past 25 years as a writer, I have man­i­fest­ed my writer’s block in count­less ways. I have tak­en day-long, mean­der­ing car rides, and, if anoth­er driver’s dri­ving has annoyed me, I have fol­lowed that per­son for hours, across state lines in some cas­es. I have researched pen­cils, going so far as to inves­ti­gate what became of the lead for­mu­las of supe­ri­or brands that no longer exist. I have vis­it­ed my library’s used book sale and stolen back books that I donat­ed because they didn’t put the books in their col­lec­tion like I asked them to. I have also stolen copies of my own books from library used book sales, when I’ve dis­cov­ered they were copies I inscribed to spe­cif­ic read­ers, and the read­ers hadn’t val­ued them. I have start­ed nation­al cam­paigns to boy­cott can­dy bar com­pa­nies when they changed their pack­ag­ing from tra­di­tion­al paper and foil to Mylar. I have writ­ten rants on social media web­sites, about pol­i­tics or Amer­i­can his­to­ry or Eng­lish gram­mar, or some­times about social media itself. I have writ­ten let­ters to the edi­tors of dai­ly news­pa­pers, or pre­tend­ed to be a col­lege stu­dent and writ­ten satir­i­cal pieces for col­lege news­pa­pers. I have savored after­noons drink­ing beer in bars with names like “Hur­ri­cane” and “Ice House,” flirt­ing with attrac­tive female bar­tenders, watch­ing soc­cer (which I loathe) and cor­rect­ing the gram­mar of men who speak rude­ly to the wait­ress­es. I have feud­ed with a local thrift store because they refused to exchange a $3 den­im shirt I’d bought that didn’t fit me. I have called the office of Con­necti­cut Sen­a­tor Lieber­man and argued with his under­lings about his poli­cies, even though I am not now, nor have I ever been, a res­i­dent of Con­necti­cut. I have invent­ed an alter ego, Dako­ta Perez, and per­suad­ed small-town jour­nal­ists to write arti­cles about “my” exploits.

The Ger­man Chris­t­ian the­olo­gian and philoso­pher Meis­ter Eck­hart said that God gives to each one of us what is best for him. I believe this is why God has not giv­en me a sil­ver Aston Mar­tin V12 Van­quish, nor a bour­bon-drink­ing 25-year-old mis­tress in the form of “red-head­ed, deep-breast­ed, slen­der and indo­lent” Claris­sa from John Cheever’s sto­ry “The Chaste Claris­sa.” God knows that nei­ther the Aston Martin’s 568 horse­pow­er, nor the deep-breast­ed red­head reclin­ing lan­guorous­ly in the pas­sen­ger seat with a bot­tle of Maker’s Mark Ken­tucky Straight Bour­bon in her lap would be best for me. Not at all. And if I had writer’s block at the same time? For­get about it. I wouldn’t self-destruct; I would spon­ta­neous­ly com­bust.

 

The Legend of Dakota Perez

In Per­pet­u­at­ing Trou­ble, when describ­ing all of the ways in which Orcutt’s writer’s block has man­i­fest­ed itself, he writes, “I have invent­ed an alter ego, Dako­ta Perez, and per­suad­ed small-town jour­nal­ists to write arti­cles about my exploits.”

Fol­low­ing is one of the “Dako­ta Perez” arti­cles from the Downeast Coastal Press.

Downeast Coastal Press — Week of Novem­ber 15, 1994
“Sto­ry­teller Dako­ta Perez Comes to Machias”
by Wayne Smith

Dako­ta Perez is a drifter, a per­son who lives all over the world. Perez is a man who likes to be heard as he mix­es his real life expe­ri­ence with fic­tion, often stretch­ing the truth. He is a sto­ry­teller, a lit­er­ary gen­uine.

I hap­pened to catch up with Perez, and I chat­ted with the man last week. His life is fan­tas­tic and this is what I found out.

I’ll let the read­er decide on this col­or­ful interview—probably one of the best I remem­ber in my five years writ­ing for the DCP.

Perez’s favorite sports sto­ry came when he was liv­ing in New York. It was the 1978 World Series, when Reg­gie Jack­son hit three home­runs [sic] for the Yan­kees in a game against the Dodgers.

“I saw Jack­son hit all those home­runs. That guy could real­ly hit. He was just amaz­ing. But the thing they don’t tell you about Jack­son is that fans after the game would make fun of him, call­ing him a jerk. And Jack­son had a Trans Am where his trunk was full of bats. As peo­ple were say­ing this about Jack­son, he would just take the bats out of the trunk and hurl them at his crit­ics. If he hit you, [you] would die.”

He fin­ished with two state­ments about New York before he talked about Alas­ka. “Don’t talk to peo­ple with blue hair on the sub­way. And the water in the Hud­son Bay [Riv­er] is not clean enough to drink yet.”

In Alas­ka, Perez stayed briefly with a fam­i­ly one win­ter which had a rit­u­al of chop­ping wood naked. It would help in [the] spir­i­tu­al heal­ing of the pow­er of nature, they claimed.

“This guy would split wood naked. It was cold. He had me do it. I nev­er did so much raw phys­i­cal labor in my life. you try chop­ping wood in Jan­u­ary buck-naked and see how you like it. I bet you change your tune in life, too.”

Perez said his par­ents were killed and he lived in an orphan­age. “Nuns gave me col­or­ing books to col­or, but they only gave me black and white crayons. I nev­er knew there was col­or in the world until I was nine. Lat­er, I would ask old­er peo­ple if there was col­or when they were grow­ing up. When I was four in the orphan­age I nev­er had any stim­u­la­tion to answer until they gave me a ted­dy bear to inter­act with. I squeezed it, and after that I want­ed to squeeze every­thing I could get my hands on….

“I was in Texas for three months and that’s prob­a­bly how long that I will stay in Machias,” says Perez. “It’s like a reverse time warp up here. It’s like Einstein’s rel­a­tiv­i­ty the­o­ry applied to trav­el. They even have auto­mo­biles up here.”

“Seems like nothing’s mov­ing up here. Sur­pris­ing there is decaf­feinat­ed cof­fee up here.”

Perez van­ished again, his voice spin­ning like a car, the sto­ries run­ning off his tongue while he walked down Main Street.

 

Preview of Perpetuating Trouble

The mem­oir con­tains adven­tures and episodes that occurred dur­ing a 20-year peri­od of the author’s life. Fol­low­ing are the chap­ter titles and brief syn­opses of their con­tents:

1 — Alien Girls — In which the author receives writ­ing advice from two female extrater­res­tri­als.

2 — The Thomas Kinkade Affair — In which the author attempts to divest him­self of a hoard of loathed paint­ings.

3 — You Know What’s Com­ing Next — In which the author describes a prostate exam.

4 — Absent­mind­ed — In which the author doc­u­ments his ten­den­cies toward absent­mind­ed­ness.

5 — The Red­head in the Emer­ald Slick­er — In which the author chron­i­cles his brief love affair with the red­head.

6 — A Sor­ry Men­di­cant — In which the author shows what his life is like when ham­pered by writer’s block.

7 — Acci­den­tal Invaders — In which the author recounts his mis­ad­ven­ture with lady­bugs.

8 — Nobody Says Any­thing — In which the author relates his frus­tra­tions with always being the per­son who speaks up.

9 — Love Sto­ry to Sweet­ie — In which the author tells the sto­ry of his beloved writ­ing com­pan­ion, his cat.

10 — The Prodi­gal Stu­dent Returns — In which the author limns about a vis­it to his alma mater, 20 years after grad­u­a­tion.

 

* Book cov­er image, “Writer nov­el­ist drink­ing whiskey work­ing on a book using type­writer” (stock pho­to ID: 530717434) by Peter Bernik, used under license from Shut­ter­stock, Inc.