There is no more perverse, unpredictable, or idiosyncratic culture than this one. Last week, I wrote about my response to a column on Slate in which my new book, Virtuous Reality, was trashed and I was a) compared to the Unabomber; b) accused of consorting with violent-film buffs, phone phreaks, and "Web-porn peddlers"; c) labeled "St. Jon of Cyberspace"; and d) compared to Dave Garroway and Milton Berle.
I was portrayed as brooding alone in the isolation of my basement, which the Slate writer, Jack Shafer, said "sounds like a clammy and frightening place to work."
The idea that he might have heard anything about my basement at all out there in Redmond was a shock. Not surprisingly, I got waves and waves of email as a result of Shafer's column.
And what, would you guess, was the bulk of the email about? What touched the deepest nerve? Was there fury at the literary distortion? Not really. Sympathy at my being described as a menace to society? A bit. Outrage at our being portrayed as a group of porn-peddling degenerates? Some.
Mostly, everybody wants to know about my basement.
"Hey, it sounds like you're down in Dracula's Castle," wrote Patricia from San Francisco.
"Sounds like my room," wrote Ian. "If it wouldn't be, like, an invasion of privacy sort of thing, could you describe it, maybe?"
Wrote Mrs. Sedell from Ft. Lauderdale, "You poor bastard. You not only wrote a dumb book but you live in a rathole. How bad is it? I'm not going to buy your book, but I might consider taking up a collection for you to fix your house up."
I now work in the most - and only - controversial basement in the history of media writing. I've never heard of a basement being attacked before.
But you either believe in interactivity or you don't. I'm sort of on record as believing in it, so I will defend my basement, something I never dreamed I'd have to do at the very start of my first nonfiction book tour.
"Oh, my God," said my wife. "How can you possibly describe it? There's so much weird shit in there."
My office is, in fact, in the basement of my house, which is nestled in the sloping hills and valleys of beautiful eastern Essex County, New Jersey, maybe six miles west of Newark, only a mile or two from the rush-hour fumes of the Garden State Parkway, and a few minutes from the new, 14-Screen Sony Theaters Wayne, where the ushers know my name.
Everybody at HotWired lives in San Francisco neighborhoods like Noe Valley and the Mission, or towns with names like Sausalito. They regale me with stories of the way-coolest new Philippine/Thai/Hawaiian restaurant. They are forever out of breath from their hiking and mountain-biking forays. Not for me. I belong here, where the snow turns black five hours after falling.
My basement has three windows overlooking the backyard, which is littered with chewbones and dog toys. It doesn't get clammy, but is sometimes quite cold, requiring those Dickens-style gloves with the fingertips cut out - but they make it too hard to type. I spent a minor fortune installing track for halogen lighting last year, but I can't figure out how to attach most of the lights to the tracks yet.
As I mentioned earlier, I don't brood alone, but with two profoundly deep yellow Labradors, Julius and Stanley, who have giant L. L. Bean cedar beds on which to doze on either side of the computer while I rant.
I have a Power Mac 7100/80. On it is a voodoo frame thingy from Haiti with a skull in the center, which Jack Shafer had better pray doesn't really work.
There are five or six gargoyles deployed around the room at strategic points - one literally hangs over the edge of my computer monitor. On the walls are six watercolors and pencil sketchings of Wellfleet and Provincetown, Massachusetts, where I hang out in the summers for as long as I can. And a wooden cherub that once graced the prow of a ship, purchased at a marine salvage company.
Also: A portrait of Thomas Paine, and one of Abraham Lincoln. A watercolor from Peking of the notorious Gang of Four from China, early heroes. A poster of another role model of mine, Ed "Movies Were His Passion. Women were his inspiration. Angora sweaters were his weakness." Wood. Also a beautiful quilt pieced by a friend.
There are hundreds of reference and other books stacked in every corner. Wires, cables, and phone lines crisscross the floor. And more than once, I or one of the dogs has tripped over one and shut me down. I have three phone lines, one of which I craftily decided to give out very sparingly so that it would remain truly private. But I've forgotten the number, so nobody ever calls on it except salespeople.
I've cranked out lots of words down here. It's strong on character, if not decor. Maybe Jack will drop in one day and we can have some tea.
