That's all true.
But in writing that book, I was talking with Richard and Lois
Shelton at dinner.
We were talking about nailing down things in your past.
When you write autobiography, you find out how, in many ways,
it's the perfect fiction in the same way
that somebody like Henry Steele Commager or Arnold Toynbee
are great novelists.
They take all this stuff and scramble it up.
And I was having a little fun with history in there.
You can make it say whatever you want to say,
it depends upon how good a storyteller you are.
But when you're writing autobiography,
there inevitably comes that moment when you stop and you
say, no, wait a minute.
Did that happen or am I making that up?
And sometimes you can't tell because things
are happening inside of you.
There's a piece I wrote in that book about my mother.
And she read it last year before she passed away.
And I ask her about it, say, what did you
think of that piece about you?
She said there was a period when she
was trying to be Sarah Vaughan.
I mean, she really practiced.
She'd listen to Sarah's records and she'd rehearse
and she was really trying to do that.
And I said, how'd you like that because I really strained
to get everything right.
She said, was that supposed to be me?
I said, yeah.
She says, well, the only way I could
deal with that is-- she said, in Al's profession,
he has to have a lot of imagination.
Can't win.
I should have lied.
Sitting Pretty is a novel that some reviewer called a blues
novel, and I kind of like that.
So when it comes out again, I'm going
to have them put on there, a blues novel by Al Young.
You know how Richard Brautigan does?
A Japanese novel, all that.
People like to get a handle on things.
I'm going to read a short passage from it which
is chapter 16.
The story is this.
This is one year in the life of a sort of likeable ne'er
do well named Sydney J. Prettyman, whose nickname is
sitting pretty.
He lives in a place called the Blue Jay
Hotel on the California Peninsula
with a lot of other strange people.
Broadway, Willie G, Miss Duchess,
all very offbeat types.
And Syd is in his late 50s, has been
divorced from his family for about 18 years.
He really didn't get divorced, he just ran away from it.
He had a job driving a Muni bus up in San Francisco.
And got up one day, he just couldn't
deal with married life.
Has a wife named Sequoia, everybody calls her squirrel,
a son named Aristotle, deliberately named that,
and a daughter named Cornelia.
And they've all grown up.
His son's become a prominent East Bay, Oakland, California
lawyer.
His daughter has done pretty well as a schoolteacher.
She calls herself an educator, and has married a man
who works in a think tank.
His wife is dying of cancer in this book.
And he's chronically addicted to radio call-in talk
shows, so much so that whenever he calls in
on this particular station, they clear the lines.
They say sitting pretty is on, put him on.
And he's invited in the wake of this notoriety
to make a television commercial, which he figures is
going to make him rich.
He's an American, we all figure that it's
our birthright to get on Newsweek once,
the cover before we die.
So he figures, this is it.
They're all going to love me.
My family is going to love me.
And he's trying to re endear himself to his family.
He reads books like 90 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary,
so that you never know what's going to come out of his mouth.
And in this particular section--
in it, I tried to capture some of the poetry of--
you say everyday speech, but it's not really that way.
Whenever you work in the vernacular,
you're really working hard.
Mark Twain taught me that, because
in actual everyday speech, people say the same things
over and over again.
It gets monotonous, and as an artist,
you have to figure out ways around that.
So this is Sydney J Prettyman talking.
He's with his friend, Willie G. Willie G
has quit a job in a wrecking yard
because he's tired of grease under his fingernails.
Whenever he eats cheeseburger lunches and grease
seeps all into the bun.
One day, he's watching this and he decides to get a better job.
So he's going up to San Francisco from East Palo Alto
to get a job--
to apply for a job as a security officer
at the San Francisco Museum of Art.
He later gets the job, becomes unbearably pretentious.
Syd is going up to see somebody at this radio station.
He doesn't know that he's going to be
asked to do a TV commercial.
And this is how it goes.
Willie G might know all about cars,
how to rip them apart and put them back together,
but he one of the scariest drivers
I ever had the displeasure of riding with.
He slouch all down in his seat, use his left hand to steer,
while he'd be steady twisting the radio knob
and smoking with his right.
He don't signal when he changed lanes,
and he keep changing lanes.
It ain't nothing for him to just all
of a sudden shoot from the slow lane over to the fast lane.
No turn signal, no hand out to window, nothing.
Just zip right over there in front of some big monster truck
then speed up till he right on top of the car in front of him
and tailgate the hell out of it and honk his horn,
really mash on it so that either the lead car got
to get out his way or else he going to zoom back
into the lane to the right and try to overtake the sucker
just so he can feel like he the leader of the pack or some fool
nonsense.
And all the time this mess is going on,
he got the radio blasting.
Either he reaching and feeling around the top of the dashboard
or up under a background behind the seat
trying to find some particular eight-track cassette
to shove in this new tape doo hickey
he then just had installed.
It's tape cartridges scattered all over the front
and back seats along with girly magazines, old racing
foams, newspaper, rags, rusty car parts, tools, Coke bottles,
Dr. Pepper and Slits cans, cigarette and candy wrappers,
potato chip bags.
Old Colonel Sanders take out boxes
with dried up chicken bones sticking up
out of them, mitch match socks and shoes, spare neckties,
shirts and breeches, all crumpled up.
Cans of Maine sardines unopened, half-eaten ice cream
cones, orange peels, LP albums with no jackets all warped out
of shape by the sun.
Vicks and Halos, Christmas tree branches,
a pair of psychedelic women's underpants.
And ain't no telling what all else is buried down
underneath all that.
There's stuff I can't even make heads or tails out of.
What it is is a miniature version
of the city dump, a traveling nuthouse on radio tires.
This rebuilt Chrysler jacked up so high off the ground
with the shocks he put in until if you wasn't careful to check
yourself right close when you open the door to step out,
you were subject to fall to your death.
I mean-- I mean sail right to the pavement
and dash your silly brains out.
The racket from the radio and tape
so damn loud, you got to holler and shout and even
scream just to be heard.
Just a minute now, Willie G's shrieked
while I'm trying to tell him about Marguerite and squirrel
and how much it means to me to be riding up
to talk over this deal, whatever it was, with my, Ed Jason.
Hold on, Syd.
I got something you just gots to listen to,
if I can just locate the darn tape.
Now here you go feeling and fumbling around the floor
again.
Ain't looking at the road or nothing,
swerving all in and out the lane.
My throat sore from shouting.
My nerves, every single one of them,
then shriveled up and collapsed.
I just flat out give up.
For some reason, don't ask me why,
I got up that morning feeling like,
well, Marguerite she good looking.
And Marguerite is someone he met in a liquor store,
but she's very wealthy.
And one thing has led to another.
Marguerite, she good looking and educated,
and even sensitive when she lightened up on that bourbon.
Plus she consider herself some kind of soul sister
and love to whip on me all at well-aged exquisite what
the late Mr Ian Fleming referred to as pussy galore.
You ever see that picture, Goldfinger?
Yet and still behind all that, I still
find it hard to fill her in on what's
been happening with me all this time
I've been away from my family.
[AUDIO OUT] joker, called herself Black --Buddha.
Jack leg bartender and with a pistol close by at a joint
called Booker's T club up there around Marin City.
Being the janitor for a television station
in San Jose, which combined with being round clubs and bars,
I learned a little something about showbiz.
Not to mention short term gigs such as substitute Mayo can,
short order cooking, and dishwashing
at places like Wing Lee's Ocean Cafe.
Plus, working for people like Sam.
Damn.
That's what make time go by so quick.
Just to tell about that and take more on the book.
And that don't include all the women I got messed up with,
the hassles with people, the drinking too much,
the times I spent throwing the shopping news
and putting junk advertisements up on people's poachers just
to keep up my room rent and wine habit
which, as you might guess, got out of control from time
to time, though it's really a pretty regulated now.
All in times, I was ready to give up, but didn't.
Them evil dons and afternoons.
How are you going to tell somebody
was raised by professors, the shit you've been through?
How are you going to explain it?
On what basis?
Ain't no way they can comprehend it.
Don't care how many library books
they then laid up in and pondered and empathized with.
Willie G. grinning.
And I can see his mouth moving as he jammed another cartridge
in the tape mechanism.
But I can't make out what he's saying to save my life.
What I really need now is for Miss Duchess
to be there with us.
She claims she can read lips when she feels like it.
Luckily, it's a slow tune he put on.
A ballad and got soft violins and stuff in the background
and plays all that car shaking bamity blam boom,
give a deaf mute a headache.
He still play it loud.
But I can kind of hear myself think for a change.
What's this?
Roberta Flack, man.
She sure can't sing, can't she?
Say, Willie, I know it ain't none of my business,
but don't you ever throw nothing away?
Be with you in a second, Sid.
He cut over two lanes to the right
and almost got smashed by a Greyhound bus.
I'm about to lose every bit of my breakfast.
What was that all about?
Sorry, man.
But I had to get out of that lane or else
we'd have ended up way over on Van Ness Avenue.
But that's where I want to go.
The station is not too far from there.
Oh, is that right?
I thought you told me it was downtown.
Well, actually, you can get there
from downtown pretty quick.
At least you got me to San Francisco.
Oh, just relax, Sid.
A few minutes ain't going to make that much difference.
Now what was you saying to me back there?
Oh, it wasn't nothing important.
But would you tell me this.
Well, it's two things I want to know, really.
First off-- what's the significance
of all them neckties you keep in the back seat?
No big thing.
I just like to change ties whenever the mood hits me.
I know it's strange, but that's just me.
I'll be driving someplace.
Suddenly, I pull over and put on a fresh tie.
Spruce up my image.
Ties is it.
I see a broad I want to impress and shoom!
I whip my dark towel and throw on my bright multicolored
can-you-dig-it tie.
You know, it was one time a tie saved my life.
Way back in the '60s when the Watts riot broke out,
I was tooling around down there in LA, looking for a job,
had my sharkskin suit on, beautiful shirt
and this respectable tie, looking like I'm really
together, you see.
I didn't know the riot was going on.
But look like the closer I got toward Watts,
I started noticing how hostile the Negros on the streets
is looking at me at them stoplights.
So finally, I pulled into a Texaco station, black owned,
you know.
And while I'm getting a fill up, I
asked the dude, how come people acting
so funny when they see me?
They say, oh, that's easy.
You must ain't heard about the riots yet.
These kids probably think you with the establishment
because you are dressed rather clean and bougie,
if you don't mind my saying so.
That's all I need to hear, Sid.
Shoot, I took my jacket off, my shoes, unbuttoned my shirt
and let it hang over to my navel,
found some old plastic thongs in the back of the shop,
put them on, comb my hair all every which
way until it looked all nappy and messed up,
took the purplest tie I could find and wounded round
and round my forehead.
Shoot, after that, I drove clean through Watts.
[LAUGHTER]
Fast flaming buildings, fire trucks,
people busting windows to get them a leather coat.
And not one of them clowns ever even looked at me
except to flash me the victory sign or something.
Yeah.
I couldn't really see the main point of Willie G's story.
But that didn't matter neither.
I went on anyway and popped number two on him.
What's them damn technicolor drawers doing back there?
We rolling off the freeway now.
And Willie really cracking up.
He laugh and snort and bang on the dashboard until his tears
seeping out the corners of his eyes.
I'm still wishing he would look at where he's going some.
Roberta Flack singing about how she tastes just
like a woman and a light rain starting to come down.
I sort of laugh a little myself just to keep Willie company.
But I'm still waiting on his butt
to straighten up and answer my question.
Woe, me, say [INAUDIBLE].
You sure nosy dude, ain't you?
What's so funny is I ain't sure myself whose drawers they is.
But I think they belong to this little girl I picked up, works
at the ANW over in Cupertino.
I took it to the drive in to see this vampire flick.
And it hadn't been on 15 minutes before she
comes snuggling up next to me.
You know what she say?
No, what she said, Willie?
She say, he cracked me up.
She'd say, oh, man, this is too freaky and scary for me.
I haven't been this grossed out since The Exorcist.
Then she leaned back, reach down, and slide her trous off.
I thought at the time that she stuffed them in a purse.
But, well, whosoever they belong to,
I left them back there where people
could get a look at them.
They really are a conversation piece, aren't they?
He go to having another laughing fit and keep it up
till we pull up in front of the KRZY Studios.
I keep on forgetting how crazy Willy G really is.
Here you go, Sid.
Hope you get back OK.
I'm running over here to check on the security guard job.
But I won't be heading back for a good day or two.
As this chicks stay over there in Twin Peaks,
I used to fix cars for her mother.
Watch your step coming out now.
I kick some calcified French fries
and well gnawed barbecue, spare rib bones out the way,
and open the door and take a deep breath
before I make the big leap.
Hey, Willy G come shouting at me as he pulling off, telling
people you got a good friend.
I wouldn't mind being on the radio too, yeah?
Two old ladies hobbling down the sidewalk,
leaning up against one another, stop and turn around
and look at him like he got to be tripped out.
I'm cool and pretend like I don't even know the fool.
If it hadn't been for me concentrating
on circling that damn car with white light
before getting in it, I might not be here today
to tell you all this.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Should I mention tomorrow?
[INAUDIBLE] please.
OK, I'll be
He'll be in the junior ballroom at 11 o'clock.
Junior ball room, 11 o'clock.
And it's open to everyone.
And I'll be over at Black Studies in the afternoon.
Yeah, well, that's the Black Studies.
Oh, that's the Black Studies.
What's the other one?
That's Friday.
Oh, OK.
That has no bearing.
OK.
Listen to her, not me.
Thank you again.
[APPLAUSE]