“Joseph Sutton, God bless him, writes in the grand storyteller tradition of Jean Shepherd and William Saroyan, both of whom would have been happy, I’m sure, to treat Sutton to a steak and a few martinis in exchange for an autographed copy of Morning Pages.” —Barry Gifford, author of Wild at Heart
Bedside bar mitzvah inspires an ‘almost true story’
Aleza Goldsmith
Jewish Bulletin
In a poll of the holiest places on earth, the foot of a bed might not make the list.
Unless, of course, Joseph Sutton were polled—because that’s where he celebrated his bar mitzvah.
As a 13-year-old living in Hollywood, the now 60-year-old San Francisco resident and author actually marked the rite of passage in his parents’ bedroom. His recently published novel, Morning Pages: The Almost True Story of My Life, recounts the experience, and many others, through a loosely autobiographical character named Ben Halaby.
Tackling the Dreaded “Block”
By Jonathan Farrell
The Sunset Beacon
Very few writers have the opportunity to share with readers the creative process involved in writing. This process is sometimes shared among fellow writers, but not often with the public.
San Francisco writer Joseph Sutton’s novel, Morning Pages: The Almost True Story of My Life, provides a rare glimpse into all the thoughts and feelings a writer has in the quest to do what writers do—write!
Yet there is one obstacle to the creative process that most writers know all too well—the demon known as “writer’s block.”
Ivri Nasawi, Sephardic & Middle Eastern Cultures
Syrian-Jewish writer and Los Angeles native Joseph Sutton (b. 1940) has just published his first novel, Morning Pages: The Almost True Story of My Life, a loosely fictionalized version of his past and present life. After a promising high school football career, Sutton won a football scholarship to the University of Oregon. It wasn’t until the late 1960s, while he was working as a teacher in South-Central Los Angeles, that Sutton realized he wanted to become a writer. And where else do aspiring writers go to live the boho life and write fiction? San Francisco. A familiar face on the Bay Area writers scene, these days Joe Sutton writes for a variety of magazines, including Writer’s Digest and Writers’ Journal. He has written many short stories and his first collection, The Immortal Mouth and Other Stories, will be published in 2002 by Creative Arts Book Co., the publisher of Morning Pages.
“Joseph Sutton has an eye–for navel oranges and red rubies, for heroic cats and noble geckoes, for perfect mouths and super-sized bartenders. He has an ear–for festival rhythms and regional accents, bedtime stories and cautionary tales. He has a heart–for the pull of tradition and the call of the road, for bright-eyed Greek beauties and unresponsive ladies of the night, for boys becoming men, and writers scraping by. Most of all, Joseph Sutton has a voice–that emerges strong and true in this remarkable collection of stories.” —Lynn Park, photographer and poet
“Joseph Sutton is an exciting writer. His stories are interesting, vivid, unique. He’s written two pieces about William Saroyan, his mentor, in this collection. He covers a lot of territory in 200 pages (29 stories altogether), from growing up in Hollywood to relationships to travel to sports to old age. This book is a must read.” —Gary Turchin, poet
“Joseph Sutton loads all the bases with such classic American themes as sports, travel on the road, and rollercoaster relationships… [and] brings these tales home with a literary grand slam in the title story that would have elicited a growl of approval from his celebrated role model, William Saroyan, and now evokes a howl of delight from us — the noisy fans in the bleachers.” —Ramon Sender Barayon, author of A Death in Zamora and A Planetary Sojourn
“Imagine taking your seat for a long flight with your favorite book. But the guy sitting next to you starts telling a story. A minute later, you’ve closed the book. You ask to hear more. In an hour, you’ve laughed, sighed, gasped, held back a tear, then said to hell with it and let it fall. You don’t want this flight to ever end. Joe Sutton is the guy talking, and he’s also your pilot.” —Joe Quirk, author of The Ultimate Rush and Exult
Friday November 7, 2003
by Jay Schwartz
Staff Writer
It’s not every day that someone goes from contemplating God to feeling like an average Joe in the same breath. But this makes perfect sense if you happen to be Joseph Sutton, who has a gift for bringing the cosmic down to a level that you can relate to and for elevating the ordinary to a higher plane.
When you think of Los Angeles, what comes to mind? Most people see a kaleidoscopic image of vibrant glamour, broken dreams, infinite variety, and cheap thrills. Having grown up in Hollywood, Joseph Sutton brings his expertise in the grind and shine of thrill seeking and small wonders from Los Angeles to the context of all life in The Immortal Mouth, his first collection of short stories.
“Joseph Sutton, God bless him, remembers things the way he wants to remember them, the only way to heaven for a writer. He writes in the grand storyteller tradition of Jean Shepherd and William Saroyan, both of whom would have been happy, I’m sure, to treat Sutton to a steak and a few martinis in exchange for an autographed copy of Morning Pages.”
—Barry Gifford, author of Wild at Heart
Book Description
What is the writer’s method? How does a writer get strings of inspired words from his mind onto the page? Not very damn well if you’re Ben Halaby, who’s filled with dedication but grappling with writer’s block. Halaby stumbles across a book on creativity: Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. The basic principle of Cameron’s book is to write three pages nonstop first thing in the morning for 84 days. Halaby heeds Cameron’s advice. And what we see, as the words come gushing out of his pen and soul, is not only the creative process in action, but we see a man turning into his old storytelling self again.
Excerpt from Chapter 45 of Morning Pages: “Meeting Lois Lane”
While the bartender was tapping a beer for me, this lady wanted to know my name.
“Ben Halaby,” I said.
“Very nice to meet you,” she said. “My name is Lois Lane,” and she put her hand out to shake mine. “Oh,” she said as we shook hands, “your hand is so cold. You know what that means? Cold hands, warm heart.”
Now, who else but Lois Lane, a symbol of American womanhood, would say such a nice and comforting thing like that to me?
Lois looked around 70 to me. She was so nice, so congenial…so sad.
“It must be tough having a name like yours,” I said.
“Very tough,” she replied, with a whinnying laugh. No, it was more like a donkey laugh—hee-haw, hee-haw. Poor woman, that laugh must have turned a lot of people off in her lifetime. But it didn’t bother me a bit because I was talking to Lois Lane, the caring, assertive, naive friend and colleague of Clark Kent.
“Do you come to the Stadium Club often?” she asked as the bartender laid my beer on the counter and said, “Four dollars.”
“I only come when I have a free pass,” I said, handing the bartender a five-dollar bill.
After we chatted a few minutes, I said, “Look, Lois, it’s been an honor and pleasure meeting you. I’m going to sit with my friends now.”
Where’s my story? Is it forming yet? I haven’t talked about the Giant—Dodger game which, by the way, drew 50,000 people to Candlestick Park. I haven’t mentioned what Alan, Harry, and I talked about when I sat with them in the crowded Stadium Club.
The first thing I told them was that I met Lois Lane at the bar. They didn’t believe me. Although they thought I was putting them on, they went along with the toast I proposed. The three of us raised our glasses and said in unison, “To Lois Lane.” Lois turned around on her stool, laughed her donkey laugh and graciously thanked us.
Harry asked me, “Did you scalp the ticket?”
I lied to him and Alan. I had to. I didn’t have the ticket on me because I gave it to a parking lot attendant after ten people rejected me. Harry and Alan wouldn’t have believed me if I told them I gave it away. It was the weed; my thinking processes are skewed when I’m high on it. What I said was, “I sold it for twenty bucks.”
Harry was curious. “How’d you do it?”
“Well,” I fibbed, “I walked around the parking lot for about ten minutes and was about to give up and give it away, when I came across this guy who asked me how much I was selling it for. ‘It’s a twenty-five dollar ticket,’ I told him, ‘but I’m not taking anything less than twenty bucks.’”
So there we were, sitting at a small, round table sipping our draft beers in pint glasses. Alan Holliday, a single man, the same age as me—55—was telling us how hard it is to meet a woman nowadays.
Harry looked at the waitress. “There’s your wife,” he said to Alan off the top of his pot-loaded brain. “Turn around and take a look at her. She seems very stable and healthy and she has big tits.”
Alan actually got the notion to meet this cocktail waitress with the fantastic tan and well-endowed breasts. She was wearing a short skirt and an eye-catching white sweater with an extremely low neckline.
The second she passed our table, I stopped her and asked, “What’s your name?”
“Angela,” she said.
“Angela, I’d like to introduce you to my good friend, Alan Holliday.”
Alan and Angela said a few sentences to each other. Angela found out that Alan wasn’t the man for her and Alan found out that Angela wasn’t the woman for him. End of relationship.
Harry, five years older than Alan and me, wanted to know what he should do when he retires in a few months from a company he’s been with for thirty years.
“Harry,” I said, “there’s one piece of advice I’m going to give you. I wouldn’t tell you this if I didn’t think it was worthwhile.”
“What is it?” he asked.
“I’m surely not going to tell you what to do after you retire, whether to take up photography or golf or go into your own business; no one can tell you that. What I’m about to tell you is just plain old good common sense.”
“I’m listening, Ben.”
“I’m only telling you this because this is what I did when I quit teaching high school twelve years ago because of my health.”
Harry was on pins and needles. “What did you do, Ben?”
“I didn’t worry about a thing,” I told him. “The first thing I did was to get my health back. I didn’t worry about how I was going to support my family or anything. I didn’t fight it. My first priority was to get healthy, mentally and physically. In other words, I just went along with the flow, and because of that, everything kind of fell into place and I became a costume jewelry salesman.”
“Thanks for the advice, Ben.”
Angela, the alluring waitress, stood over the three of us. “Lois Lane wants to buy you boys a drink.”
We couldn’t believe it. Why would Lois want to buy us drinks? Was it because I treated her with respect? Was it because of our toast to her earlier?
When Angela brought us our beers, we looked at Lois and raised our glasses to her. She smiled, raised her glass to us, and gave us that crazy donkey laugh again.
During the game, I bought the three of us hot dogs, peanuts and beer with the money I told them I made on the ticket. It cost me $40.
We witnessed a spectacular ending to a nail-biting Giant-Dodger game. There were two outs in the bottom of the ninth, the scored tied, 1-1, and guess who hit the game winning home run for the Giants? None other than second baseman Jeff “Clark” Kent.